Good forFood & drink lovers
The farm started on 2.5 acres in Carmel Valley in 1984. From that plot, Earthbound Farm grew into the largest grower of organic produce in the United States. The roadside farm stand is still there — a working destination, not a monument, set against the broader Salinas Valley story of how California agriculture shifted toward organic farming. If you want to understand where that shift began, this is a reasonable place to stand.
Quick facts
- ·Drew and Myra Goodman began Earthbound Farm on 2.5 acres in the Carmel Valley of California in 1984 — confirmed verbatim against UC Santa Cruz Library's 'Cultivating a Movement' oral history timeline (https://library.ucsc.edu/reg-hist/timeline-cultivating-a-movement-an-oral-history-series-on-organic-farming-and-sustainable), which states this exact fact under its 1984 entry. (Note: the source supports only the founding fact itself — who, what, where, when, acreage — not the added editorial framing about contrast with Salinas Valley scale or a 'traditional-to-organic transition,' which is interpretive commentary layered on top and not present in the source.)
- ·The Rural Development Center (RDC), an organic farming training/incubator site, was founded on a farm eight miles south of Salinas, California in 1985 — confirmed verbatim against the same UC Santa Cruz Library timeline, which states this exact fact (adding that it was founded by the Association for Community-Based Education of Washington, DC). The inference that this represents a mid-1980s cluster of organic-transition activity alongside Earthbound Farm's founding is a reasonable reading of the same single source's adjacent timeline entries, not an independent unsupported claim.
Memories
Be the first to leave a memory at Carmel Valley Road Corridor (Earthbound Farm).
Sign in to see memories your family has left at this place.
Editorial content compiled with AI assistance. Place details verified against public records.