Alan Haight

California Farmer Carries Local, Sustainable Food Message to Washington, D.C.

As a family farmer, Alan Haight says he is committed to growing local food to the highest standards, protecting the environment and building his community. Since 2003, Haight and his wife, Jo McProud, have pursued these commitments at Riverhill Farm in the Sierra Foothills near Nevada City, California.

Homesteaded by Italian immigrants in the late 1800s, the farm bears evidence of Native American use long before its settlement by Europeans. With good soil in one of the last level and open areas before the terrain drops into the Yuba Canyon, Haight says Riverhill Farm is an ideal spot to produce their crop of mixed vegetables and fruits, and to build a truly local food production system.

Haight estimates that 90 to 95 percent of his production is sold right at the farm through a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. Through the CSA, community members buy annual farm shares and receive weekly baskets of produce. The program works well at Riverhill Farm.

“We started the CSA just three years ago as a supplement to what we were doing already,” explains Haight. “The first season, we had 60 shares offered; the next year, 120; this year, 160.” Haight sees the CSA model as an extraordinary means of growing and distributing food, and as the difference between success and failure for his operation.

Haight says traveling to Washington, D.C., to talk farm policy with lawmakers, congressional staff members and high-level administrators at the US Department of Agriculture at the height of the growing season was not high on his list of things to do as he irrigated his fields one day in June. Then he got a call from Tracy Lerman, coordinator of the Organic Farmers Action Network at the Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF). She urged him to participate in the Farmer Fly-in, and he agreed, explaining that developing a sustainable food system requires political participation as well as attention to production methods.

“I feel that those are two legs that I have to stand on in order to fulfill my own aspirations for our country and the world,” says Haight.

While Haight adheres to organic production methods and standards, he says he is not certified as an organic producer. His larger interest, he says, is in building a local, sustainable food system.

"My mission isn't really to convert people to organic, but to bring them into a greater appreciation of the natural environment in which they live and the need for small, local production to satisfy the food needs of the community,” Haight explains.