History & Family

  • GREAT-GREAT OJIICHAN UMEDA

    My Ojiichan and Obaachan’s (grandfather and grandmother) families were interned in Japanese relocation camps. Here my Great-Great Ojiichan Umeda is giving the middle finger via peaceful Japanese garden tending in the camps to cope, providing a sense of peace, space, and identity in the dismal camp atmosphere. I admire him directing feelings of injustice and despondency into a garden space.

  • YAGI BROTHERS FARM

    My Ojiichan’s family immigrated here from Aichi Prefecture. They did what most immigrants could do then - farm. My Ojiichan and his three brothers formed Yagi Brothers Farm in Stockton, CA growing mostly tomatoes for canneries on about 1,100 acres. Look at me paying “attention.”

  • YAGI SISTERS FARM

    My grandfather actually insisted my father not farm. Instead he headed to the Bay Area. Here he and moms used the same farm grit and energy to do the work grind and hunker down in Hercules, CA, providing for us kiddos. Little did they know (or I for that matter), that farming would come full circle back in my life and I hope to pay homage to my ancestors’ and family’s efforts with Yagi Sisters Farm - everything they did to ensure our wellbeing is why I can do what I do.

To bring attention to the recent efforts of the Nikkei Farm History Project to document the losses of Japanese American Farmers during WWII, my previous nonprofit employer Petaluma Bounty Farm asked if I would be willing to share a bit about my family’s farming experience, immigration, and internment. Read it here.

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“A lie travels around the world, while Truth is putting on her boots.”

— C.H. Spurgeon

Reyna Yagi

Farmer / eater / doer / educator

Reyna hails 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 Acta Non Verba, UC Cooperative Extension of Alameda County, and Oakland’s Food Policy Council. She has an undergraduate degree in Environmental Science & Policy from UC Davis and a graduate degree in Food Security from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Recently she partnered with Caiti Hachmyer of Red H Farm and continues in mentorship and projects. Before that, Reyna spent three years as the Farm Manager at Petaluma Bounty Farm, a nonprofit focusing on healthy food access for all where she worked alongside community and educated a diversity of folks on sustainable, community-based agriculture. And before all that she worked in water conservation - it’s been a long, strange, fun trip to get to the farm.

She believes urban and small scale 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.

She likes to think she draws some of her farming intuition from her grandfather, a Japanese immigrant who farmed in Stockton, CA with his family, “Yagi Brothers Farm.” She pays homage to them in naming “Yagi Sisters Farm” and growing Japanese and Asian crop varietals, but also wants the “Sisters” part to envelope core women farmer mentors that solely provided her farm education. We do nothing alone and everything better together.

She also works for the Community Alliance with Family Farmers as a Regional Organizer for SGMA and Small Farms. She continues to play a supportive and collaborative role with her farmer training organization, Agroecology Commons and also keeps her ties to the Bay serving on the Sunol AgPark Advisory Committee. And keeps cultural community ties as a member of the local chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League.

When’s she’s not doing all that, she is eating, to fuel for farming of course. Every meal is something to look forward to,  something to be grateful for, something to share.