regional

Regional Partnerships

 

Creating a healthier food system is a complex challenge. It involves thousands of interconnected people and institutions. Pie Ranch recognizes that we must meet these challenges with multifaceted solutions, innovations, and partnerships.

We know we need more farmers who will grow sustainable food for local markets. We know we need farmers to have affordable access to land and capital for this production. We know we need informed and active citizens to leverage their purchasing power to enable the best stewardship of the land and care for the people who will continue to feed us all into the future.

Pie Ranch works in collaboration with hundreds of community leaders, organizations, universities, businesses, agencies and citizens to connect the dots in new ways. Pie Ranch staff have participated in various collective impact efforts in our region, such as the Community Advisory Council of the Mid-Peninsula Regional Open Space District, ChangeScale, Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, Puente de la Costa Sur, and and many others, on projects and research initiatives to help advance our vision of resilient communities, abundant landscapes, and a robust local food system. Pie Ranch was Food Justice Certified by the Agricultural Justice Project 2014-2026. Although the Agricultural Justice Project has now closed, the work is not over. Read more here to see a history of the Agricultural Justice Project.

Below is a list of some of our current regional partnerships:

  • People’s Food and Farm Project: Pie Ranch seeded the idea, is the fiscal sponsor of and attends Coalition meetings of the The People’s Food and Farm Project. PFFP seeks to address the fractures and inequities in the Bay Area food system by building a vision for what a socially just, environmentally sustainable, and economically thriving food system that centers the voices, dreams, and wisdom of workers and BIPOC communities. They aim to create a transformational food and farm bill that will make our food system more healthy, sustainable, resilient, and equitable. Trying to shift gov spending away from industrial agriculture and corporate welfare, to protect the things that are truly important for the largest number of people (farmers, consumers, food safety, improve nutrition)

  • Community Farmland Trust (CFT): Pie Ranch’s efforts towards structural change in land tenure options for farmers who have been marginalized from the private land ownership models that dominate our region. UCSC, CA Farmlink and other orgs working on a shared vision for this.

  • Puente de la Costa Sur in Pescadero does community organizing, supports the Latin@ community in Pescadero. Pie Ranch has partnered with Puente on ESL classes hosted at Pie; Puente to Pie – a Spanish immersion garden based summer program for preschoolers; collaborating on employing high school youth at Pie Ranch in the summer; community events; and meet regularly to strengthen each other’s work.

  • Puente, Coastside Hope, Pacifica Resource Center - working collaboratively on housing justice issues

  • UCSC Agroecology - farmer pathways collaboration

  • Amah Mutsun Tribe & Land Trust: Pie Ranch began a formal partnership in 2014, with a Memorandum of Understanding signed by both Pie & AM tribe at a Sunrise Ceremony on the lower slice. Tribal stewards & Pie staff have created  a Native Garden for demonstrating ethnobotanical uses of native plants. Former Tribal Chairperson, Val Lopez is an elder in our Circle of Advisors. See Land Acknowledgement 2026