Greg Massa and his wife, Raquel Krach, own Massa Organics, an organic rice, wheat, and almond farm in northern California. They have five children.

A sense of place

Why Greg grows only American rice

By Greg Massa

August 26, 2008

We’re rice farmers, and as I mentioned in my last post here on Culinate, we’re unusual among rice farmers in that we direct-market our organic brown rice at farmers’ markets. We’re up to nine farmers’ markets a week now, and this week, we’ll also be selling rice in the Marketplace at Slow Food Nation in San Francisco.

The rice we grow is called Calrose, a high-quality, medium-grain rice unique to California. It’s the variety that grows best in our soil and climate. But it’s also the most common variety grown in California. So what qualifies our farm for recognition at Slow Food Nation?

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Greg Massa and his wife, Raquel Krach, own Massa Organics, an organic rice, wheat, and almond farm in northern California. They have five children.

Rice dream

What rice farming is really like

By Greg Massa

July 10, 2008

Most people in the U.S. don’t realize it, but rice is the most important food crop in the world.

Two-thirds of the world’s population (more than 4 billion people) eat rice every day, and for too many people, a bowl of rice will be their only meal. Global rice production totals more than 400 million tons, much of it consumed within just a few miles of where it was grown.

The exception to this local consumption of rice is the United States, where half of the crop is exported and the largest purchaser of rice is Anhauser-Busch, the maker of Budweiser beer.

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