An Immigrant's Story
5m 21s
Maria Ines Catalan is an organic farmer and entrepreneur in Hollister, California. After eight years harvesting produce for minimum wage, Catalan made the transition to becoming an organic farmer and marketing her produce to restaurants, farmers’ markets and a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) network that she developed. As a Mexican immigrant, Catalan is committed to bringing healthy, nutritious food and food education to the large Mexican population who comprise most of the farm workers in California’s central valley. Speaking in Spanish with English sub-titles, Catalan, who is the first Latina farmer to start a CSA, talks about her commitment to organic farming and to distributing Spanish language resources to enable small Latino family farmers to develop successful businesses and bring organic produce to their communities. Nancy Gammons, Manager of the Watsonville Farmers’ Market, speaks about the importance of making organic produce available to agricultural workers and why recruiting Spanish-speaking organic farmers like Catalan to the Watsonville market “allows health to spread in all directions.”.