Meet the Farmer
Magaña Farm
Bertha Magaña
Established In 2007
Location Aromas, CA
Acreage 9
What they sell Mixed vegetables & berries
When they began working with KTA 2016
Advising focus Market access; crop planning; water & soil health
Support our ongoing advising work with Magaña by giving to KTA.
Bertha Magaña spent years working as a farmworker after immigrating to the US from Mexico, before she decided to begin her own farm business. Her dream was to build a farm that could provide a livelihood for her family and where she could work alongside her husband, Heriberto, and their three children. Bertha’s experience as a farmworker further inspired her passion for sustainable agriculture, shaping her interest in practices -- water conservation, planting hedgerow varieties to attract pollinators and other beneficial insects -- that would be just as kind to the planet as her family.
Bertha joined Kitchen Table Advisors in 2016, as a recent graduate from the Farmer Education Program (PEPA) at the Agriculture & Land-Based Training Association (ALBA). Her goal upon joining the advising program was to achieve her family’s dream of owning farmland. KTA immediately joined California FarmLink and the USDA’s Farm Service Agency in supporting Bertha through a land purchase, ensuring she and Heriberto were well-poised to take on the risk. In 2017, Magaña Farm purchased the nine acres they currently farm.
Advising Snapshot: 2022
Bertha Magaña of Magaña Farm spent the past two years pivoting her previously wholesale-dependent sales strategy; the pandemic highlighted the importance of diversifying her market channels and the need for more direct to market sales opportunities. Her KTA business advisor, Tania Zuñiga, worked closely with Bertha to develop tools and skills to manage relationships with buyers within this market. After years of learning now to navigate these new market channels, Magaña Farm successfully secured significant accounts in the Salinas Valley region. While her new skills, and the support of KTA and its network of patterns, helped open doors to these accounts, ultimately buyers were with the quality of Bertha’s produce and connected with her passion and her story.
With Bertha’s experience breaking into new markets, she is excited to support other Latina farm business owners in the region in doing the same. Bertha and several KTA clients and farm business advisors, including Tania, organized a local network of Latina farmers – Red de Mujeres en Agricultura – where they were able to share a space and nurture meaningful connections, empower one another, and encourage Latina leadership in their communities. One member of the network, Celsa Ortega of Induchucuiti Organic Farms, expressed a need to bring on new market channels for her business. Bertha resonated with her position and recognized her own recently-acquired experience and connections in the area, and offered her support and solidarity. Bertha introduced Celsa to a couple buyers that had recently established accounts with Magaña Farm, and vouched for Celsa as a business owner and colleague; both buyers are exploring initial sales opportunities with Induchucuiti Organic Farms.
