Many Salinas Valley residents don’t have access to the organic crops they pick.

Walking slowly down a muddy farm road, Deborah Yashar points to a row of white, sweet-smelling flowers planted next to green shoots of broccoli. The alyssum flower attracts beneficial insects that protect crops from pests, Yashar says. Yashar is the food systems project coordinator for the Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association (ALBA), which provides guidance and subsidized land to small organic farmers.

A gray and cloud-covered sky envelops the soggy, 112-acre farm located about eight miles south of Salinas. Yashar, who wears a black, button-up jacket on top of a purple jumper, points to a plot of strawberries on the other side of an old farmhouse. Despite the near-winter weather, the berries grow under the white metal arches of a hoophouse, which is essentially a portable greenhouse. Santa Rosa Organics, a family-owned company, grows the strawberries and then sells them to Trader Joe’s.

This is good news for people who shop at the specialty grocer. But there aren’t any Trader Joe’s in the Salinas Valley. And Trader Joe’s isn’t a usual shopping destination for the valley’s low-income residents.

Grocery stores sampled in the farm-worker neighborhoods of east Salinas don’t carry organic, locally grown produce, according to a community food assessment report released by ALBA earlier this year. Additionally, farmers markets are hard to come by in south Monterey County.

As a result, the same people who pick the crops don’t have access to the valley’s healthy bounty. “It’s ironic that here in the Salinas Valley—the Salad Bowl of the World—it can be hard to find quality produce,” Yashar says.

ALBA is trying to change this scenario by setting up more farmers markets and farm stands in front of places like churches. These efforts are part of ALBA’s long-term plan to distribute homegrown, organic produce to low-income people and farmworkers in the Salinas Valley.