Food has always played a vital role in Chuck Samuelson’s life.
The industry gave him his first job as a dishwasher when he was a teenager. He was the chef and owner of cafes in La Jolla, oversaw operations for Stone Brewing Co. and founded a nonprofit that offers culinary and hospitality job training.
He said one thing has stuck from working many years with food: “We don’t make much in San Diego anymore in terms of the food system.”
“It used to be that things were made in your community for the members of your community,” said Samuelson. “We’ve lost all that.”
An idea to bring back a more direct-to-consumer option sparked when Samuelson found an avocado farm in Bonsall for lease. He thought, what if consumers could get avocados directly from the source, and help farmers make more money than they would if they sold to a distributor?
“One of the challenges for avocado farmers is that whole infrastructure around avocados is owned by, for the most part, multinational corporations,” he said.
The idea is inspired by the European farming initiative, Naranjas del Carmen, Samuelson said. Based in Spain, the farm allows people to sponsor its orange trees and receive a share of the harvest.
“A lot of the best ideas are borrowed from other organizations,” he said. “(Naranjas del Carmen) did a pivot to get people to buy their citrus, their oranges, directly from them.”
He’s piloting that same model at his farm via a tree adoption program. And hopes his nonprofit, Heal the Earth, will grow the program into a regional network of producers.
“We think the Adopt a Tree program, both for our farm and for future farms that join our program, can be a game-changer if we can cut out all the middlemen,” said Samuelson.
Avocado tree acreage in San Diego County today is 13,300 — and it's dropped by nearly half since 2009, according to the California Avocado Commission.
“Farming is a tough life,” said Samuelson. “Cost of water, labor is expensive and scarce right now. The control of the system by multinational corporations makes everything difficult for farmers.”
How the tree adoption program works
You adopt a tree. You can name it, get a certificate and its GPS coordinates, which show the tree’s location on the farm.
The adopter can get organic avocados from their tree shipped to their home.
It’s all covered with an annual membership.
“That money will help us then buy organic fertilizers, pay for water for the tree, pay for the pruning and the upkeep,” said Samuelson.
The nonprofit said irrigation and care routines are adapted to weather conditions to protect trees. But if a tree declines or dies, adopters will be assigned a new tree on the farm.
Samuelson said the long-term goal is to bring more family-owned farms onto the adoption program.
