Farm-to-Table: How a young Salinas grower is feeding his community.

At 26, Bryan Corona is juggling a full-time job working for a berry company in Watsonville and his own small business, with a vision that stretches beyond his current half-acre plot at 1700 Old State Road in Salinas.

Corona Organic Roots is small in size, but big in ambition: to bring fresh, organic vegetables directly from the fields to the tables of families across the Salinas Valley and the Monterey Peninsula.

“And I don’t want to take the route that I think everyone takes, which is basically wholesale,” Corona says. “The way I'm going is mostly selling directly to consumers.”

Born and raised in East Salinas, Corona grew up surrounded by agriculture. His father, an immigrant who has always worked in the fields, and his grandfather, who farmed in Jalisco, Mexico, gave him an early connection to the land.

Family trips to Mexico meant walking through fields of sugar cane and corn, seeing firsthand the labor and pride that went into growing food.

That experience followed him into high school, where he gravitated toward agriculture. His first job was working at Tanimura & Antle, a major independent fresh produce grower and shipper founded in 1982 and headquartered in Spreckels.

Once he graduated from Everett Alvarez High School, Corona studied agricultural business at Chico State University.

The turning point came during a job after college that required him to travel to Yuma, Arizona. There, working closely with field crews and inspectors, he realized he thrived working in the fields and envisioned himself having his own farming business.

“I started to enjoy more and more, being around vegetables,” Corona says.

He learned about the Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association(ALBA), a Salinas-based program that offers an intensive one-year course and the chance to lease affordable farmland with access to water and tractors.

“I got the opportunity through ALBA and I just wanted to do something different, and that's why I decided to pursue having my own farm and starting my own business,” Corona says.

Through ALBA’s Organic Farm Incubator, people can establish their own farms on ALBA’s land. Each year, ALBA leases over 80 acres of farmland to 36-40 start-up organic farms, with 10-15 newly launched farms. Farms start on half an acre and can expand to about five acres over four years in the incubator, before transitioning to independent farming, according to ALBA’s webpage.

Corona used personal income and savings to launch Corona Organic Roots. He began working his leased half-acre in October 2025, planting through the winter and harvesting his first crops—broccoli, cauliflower and rainbow carrots—by February 2026.

This season, he’s diversified into Italian zucchini, Mexican gray squash, green beans, pickled cucumbers, yellow and red cherry tomatoes, yellow squash and cilantro, selling 25-pound boxes for $30.

“We don’t use any types of chemicals, everything is with ground and water and all the fertilizer that's put on [the land] comes from its own vegetables,” Corona says.

Selling vegetables was not easy at first, but that began to change after a social media boost from Salinas Councilmember Andrew Sandoval in late July, according to Corona.

Today Corona Organic Roots supplies two local stores weekly, one of them being Jerome's Carmel Valley Market. Corona and his family deliver boxes directly to customers throughout Monterey County and donates produce that doesn’t meet retail standards.

“Whenever I don't have enough buyers, or whenever the vegetables are not worth being on the shelf, I tend to donate as well,” Corona says.

Corona’s long-term goal is modest but meaningful: five to ten acres, enough to sustain a living while maintaining the quality he values.

“What makes me go day by day is that I'm actually growing stuff and feeding the community I grew up in,” he says.