The market rental rate of Alba’s land is about $2,100 per acre per year, but first-year students pay 25 percent of that rate. From there, farmers get bumped up to larger plots based on their performance. With each bump comes a rise in rent. Those who make it through the roughly four year long incubator usually end with a little under four acres to their name, renting at 85 percent of the market value.
“In talking to beginning farmers and anyone working in the field, land access always comes up as one of the most challenging pieces,” said Ms. Obudzinski. “The incubator approach is pretty unique in that it takes that off the table and provides farmers access, albeit for a short period of time.”
Many of Alba’s students are Latinos who followed their families, or traveled on their own, to California to work in the state’s multibillion dollar agricultural industry. About 70 percent are immigrants. “From our perspective, farmworkers are a great group to recruit from for the next generation of farmers,” said Nathan Harkleroad, a program director at Alba. “They grew up around it and know the work that goes into it.”
An Alba student, Ramiro Cenobio, and his brother Juan Carlos used to tend their father’s small farm in Oaxaca, Mexico, when they were younger. Years later, Ramiro left a job picking strawberries in California and applied for Alba. The brothers now work on building up Cenobio Organics, their first farm business, where they’re growing cilantro, tomatoes, carrots and strawberries.
Mr. Cenobio only makes about as much as he did when he was a field worker, but he said the jump to become an entrepreneur was worth it. “I prefer being focused on something that I’m creating myself than to be working for another company,” said Mr. Cenobio, who is looking forward to graduating from Alba in the coming year.
In a 2018 survey of 104 alumni who had graduated from the business training course over the past two decades, 49 still had active farm businesses. Sixteen of those were running their businesses from Alba’s incubator farm while 33 had moved on to land outside the incubator. All together they employ a total of 175 people and generate about $5 million annually in sales.
Most of those who didn’t choose to open a farm outside Alba reported increases in their income after graduating and returning to jobs in agriculture and other industries.
