Regenerate 68! Farm Spotlight: Julia Yamasaki

Soil. Water. Food. Community. 

For Julia Yamasaki, regenerative organic agriculture advisor at the Regenerate 68! Farm, regenerative agriculture is about getting back to basics, connecting people to land and life’s essential resources.

A Monterey County native, Julia has witnessed firsthand how corporate consolidation in the agriculture industry has shrunk the number of small and mid-sized farmers in the Salinas Valley and beyond. “Regenerative organic farming is really a step in the right direction to bringing things back into the community, and into the land, first,” Julia says.

Julia’s passion for small-scale, place-based agriculture began while growing up on a ranch in Monterey County. Her interest in regenerative agriculture took root during her formative years at Midland School, a boarding school on a 2,000-acre working ranch in the Santa Ynez Valley, including 10 acres of certified organic farmland, where she and fellow students grew and harvested their own food.

Moving back to Monterey County, Julia quickly got to work building her knowledge through practice in the field. She later joined Post Ranch Inn as an Edible Landscape Specialist and then joined as an advisor to the Regenerate 68! Farm, Regenerative California’s 68-acre demonstration site for regenerative organic agriculture training and outcomes-based farming practices.

After more than a decade in the field, Julia knows the challenges and opportunities for regenerative agriculture. The hardest part? Communicating with larger counterparts, and across different perspectives, disciplines, brands, and products, about the value of regenerative organic agriculture and the need for systemic change.

The upside? “People are really becoming excited and understanding of the ideas of regenerative organics and community scale,” shares Julia. “More people than ever are learning how to read their ingredients and learning where products are coming from and learning what the value of things really are. It’s super exciting.”

As more growers (and consumers) embrace the benefits of regenerative agriculture, Julia has advice for small-scale farmers looking to adopt or expand regenerative practices. “There is no perfect formula,” Julia says. “There's what works for you and your system and your microclimate and your land, and just doing one step in the right direction is better than no steps.” Incremental change, rather than rapid, full-scale adoption, is not only practical but can help take the pressure off of small farmers seeking both environmental and financial sustainability in a tough industry.

In Monterey County, one of the nation’s biggest producers of organic produce, she sees an opening for small-scale farmers to come back into the community and the local market to fill an important gap not being met by bigger growers: accessibility.

“I think that Monterey County has a really unique opportunity for small farmers to actually support lower-income communities instead of the niche that they have been filling, which is the higher-income communities that have the privilege to go buy organic local produce,” Julie says. “Lower-income folks can come to the farm stands or farmers markets, or get a CSA, and actually get a better price than from the grocery store a lot of the time, and support their local communities and these farmers in a really unique way.”

Julia embraces this regenerative relationship of land, food, and community on and off the farm. When she’s not growing, one of her favorite things to do is cook: “I think it's really cool to take ingredients that you've grown and to transform them from one form of beauty to another type of beauty, creating an amazing dish, and sharing it with friends.”