Efren Avalos of Avalos Organic Farm
Market Match provides extra money to CalFresh recipients to afford fresh fruits and vegetables across the state at over 290 sites to make fresh and nutrient dense food more affordable.
But why does Market Match prioritize produce grown by California small farmers instead of just any large-scale industrial farm? It’s because we know we need to lay the foundation for a livable future. That includes bolstering farming practices that will withstand the ravages of climate change and supplying their regional communities as opposed to the industrial growers that are undermining regional agricultural economies and food sovereignty around the world.
We know that we need to invest and preserve the biodiversity of insects that prop up the entire food chain while we retain and sustain healthy soil composition so that the food we consume has a higher level of nutrients. And it is well documented that small and mid-sized farmers are the ones that are employing sustainable agricultural methods. (See this previous blog post).
We are highlighting one of the farmers who employs this sustainable agricultural practices and who sells at a number of Market Match farmers’ markets including our very own Berkeley Farmers’ Markets – Efren Avalos of Avalos Organic Farm. Ecology Center Youth Intern Mar interviewed Efren Avalos during the Saturday Downtown Berkeley Farmers’ Market recently.
Efren Avalos has been farming for his entire life. He grew up farming in the state of Michoacan, Mexico, with his parents. He is a 4th generation farmer in his family.
After coming to California at the age of 17, Avalos spent 12 years as a farm worker for a large strawberry company. In 1998 he founded Avalos Organic Farm on 4 acres of land near Hollister, CA. Since then, he has expanded to 17 acres, growing a broad selection of produce of at least 30 crops for farmers’ markets and restaurants including peppers, corn, strawberries, melons, tomatoes, and diversified vegetables and herbs as well as dry beans.
Avalos farm uses sustainable pest control and cultivation techniques including using good crop rotation that builds and sustains soil health, planting cover crops that attracts beneficial insects and reintroduces nutrients back to the soil, and applying compost. Avalos employs 5 full-time and 6 seasonal workers and also works on his own farm.
Efren Avalos shared how he feels about farming, “I love my job because I can bring this nice community a little bit of the good food that they deserve.”
This year marks 23 years that he has sold at Berkeley Farmers’ Markets. He has some customers that have been shopping with him for all of those years.
When asked what are some of the biggest challenges to beginning farmers, Avalos shared that finding a market for your produce and crops is the biggest challenge. He shared that many farmers he knows are great at growing food but struggle to find the right outlet to sell their produce. When entering a farmers’ market for the first time as a vendor you have to build a new relationship with customers which takes time. Efren shares, “My customers are very nice. Believe it or not, from the 23 years that I have been part of this market, I have customers who have supported us from the beginning, and we are still seeing them come here.”
Efren sells at Berkeley Farmers’ Market and a few others in the Monterey County area, as well as to restaurants and a few Bay Area-based wholesalers, though he mentioned that farmers’ markets are key to his sales and business model. When asked what makes a farmers’ market successful for the farmers, Efren replied, “It depends on the community. That makes a huge difference. You have to know the community to know what to grow.”
Another challenge Avalos noted was access to long-term leases to be able to fully invest in building the soil composition of your farm as well as rising inflation with prices of necessary goods not decreasing, as well as the effects of climate change and droughts.
Efren: “It’s been a lot of changes lately and most of the changes are not helping us much. Especially seeds and plants – it’s getting super expensive lately. Lot more expensive than a couple of years ago. I can say double in prices. …It’s been kind of hard lately for everybody with the droughts and all the rules.”
Looking to the future, for his farm that he has operated his entire life, he is hoping to pass the business onto his children but recognizes that they may not want to take over the business. For now, he plans to continue the farming that he loves despite all of the challenges of heat, cold, droughts, and floods.
We know that small farmers are the only ones farming sustainably. Small farmers use cultivation practices that grow food with less inputs—less water, less or no pesticide, and less chemical nitrogen. Building up soil structure through compost, good crop rotation, limited tillage, and growing cover crops help the soil retain moisture when it’s dry and drain water when it floods. These are lessons that many knew when most people were farmers and directly connected to the land, but that may seem abstract or have become specialized knowledge in our current economic structure where most of us no longer grow food or have access to the means of our own subsistence. But the lessons of the past about how to grow food and maintain our food supply are still relevant today and build the foundation for our collective ecologically sustainable future.
