Located near Chico in the fertile Sacramento Valley of Northern California, Massa Organics is part farm, part experiment, and all labor of love.
We’re passionate about giving people access to healthy, delicious foods, farmed in a manner that restores the health of our soil, ecosystems, and climate.
Creating a healthy farm takes patience, curiosity, and humility. Ecologists by training, we grow our crops using an evolving mix of organic and regenerative farming practices. We started as a small organic rice farm in 2002, but as we’ve learned more about the potential of soil health to transform our food system, we’ve adopted a range of innovative farming techniques focused on building soil organic matter. We want to do more than sustain — we want to make things better.
Today, our almonds and medium-grain brown rice allow you to share in our journey. They’re nutty, sweet, and nutrient rich. We grow them within a dynamic ecosystem that values the health of livestock, wildlife, workers, and others within our community.
As we continue to learn, evolve, and improve, we hope to model this style of farming for conventional farms, so together we can be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
We’re humbled and inspired to share a piece of our farm with you.
Greg Massa and Raquel Krach
Our vision
To nourish our bodies with healthy, high-quality food.
To regenerate our soil with innovative farming practices.
To leave the planet and our land healthier than we found them.
More Earth-friendly practices
Regenerative agriculture is just one of many ways we work to reduce our ecological footprint. Here are a few others.
The house that rice built
We’re eco-minded farmers who want to stay connected with our land. So when we built a new house in 2001, it seemed only natural to use our land’s resources as the raw materials.
Made of rice straw — one of our farm’s most abundant resources — our house is both modern and old school (straw has been used in construction since the Paleolithic Era). Its walls are two feet thick and coated with plaster or stucco on both sides.
The material makes a great natural insulator, and it’s rodent-, fire-, and bullet-proof to boot!
To keep us from overheating in the sunny Sacramento Valley, we added passive solar features like small east- and west-facing windows, 20-foot-tall ceilings that give the hot air a place to go, and ample cement plaster to act as a thermal sink. It’s fun aesthetically, too. We love the soft, bumpy texture of our walls, which are thick enough for recessed shelves, broad window seats, and other fun extras.
In many ways, our strawbale house is a metaphor for our farm. It took passion and creativity to build, using centuries-old techniques that are coming back into fashion as we look toward a greener future.
