The Farmers
Caiti Hachmyer is a farmer, educator, activist and public academic. She founded Red H Farm in 2009.
Caiti has an undergraduate degree in Anthropology and Conservation Resource Studies from UC Berkeley and a graduate degree in Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning from Tufts University.
In addition to building an agroecological farm landscape, she is the director of Celebrating Women's Leadership in Food, a contract researcher and writer, an educator with Agroecology Commons, a facilitator with Climate Farm School and adjunct faculty (teaching Agroecology) at Sonoma State University. In 2021 she was awarded Farm Advocate of the Year at the CA Small Farms Conference for her work supporting women in food. Caiti has been acknowledged by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and by American Farmland Trust for her leadership in agroecological farming.
She is a published writer, having contributed chapters to two separate books – “Notes from a New Farmer: Rent Culture, Insecurity and the Need for Change,” in Land Justice: Re-imagining Food, Land and the Commons in the United States(Food First Books) and “The Role of Land Rights in Social Transformation: Stories from Boston and Philadelphia” in Public Policies for Food Sovereignty: Social Movements and the State (Routledge). Most recently she published a piece in Civil Eats on the lived experience of climate change at Red H Farm.
Reyna Yagi initially met Caiti after completing the Bay Area Farmer Training Program with the Multinational Exchange for Sustainable Agriculture (MESA) and became her apprentice. Caiti connected Reyna to various local farm jobs and ultimately Petaluma Bounty Farm, a local nonprofit focusing on healthy food access for all, where Caiti was a Board member. After 3 years of growing her farm skillset, working alongside the community and educating a diversity of folks on sustainable, community-based agriculture, Reyna and Caiti are coming full circle to put two heads and hearts into a for-profit, equity focused operation.
Hailing originally from the East Bay where she was first inspired to farm from her time immersed in the urban ag and food justice movement there with roles at youth urban farm Acta Non Verba, UC Cooperative Extension of Alameda County and Oakland’s Food Policy Council. She has an undergraduate degree in Environmental Science & Policy and a graduate degree in Food Security. She keeps her ties to the Bay as a member of the Sunol AgPark Advisory Committee. She believes urban farming is a changemaker for building health and wealth in community and believes our ability to collaborate is the ultimate metric we can use to define our progress in building a sustainable and just future. Joining Caiti in this partnership endeavor integrates that important community ethos alongside ecological land stewardship. She likes to think she draws her farming intuition from her grandfather, a Japanese immigrant who farmed in Stockton, CA with his family, "The Yagi Brothers Farm." When she's not farming, she's eating or doing both at the same time. She enjoys exploring the craft brew scene, hiking, and board games.
