On hundreds of farms and ranches across California, Craig is introducing a new generation to agriculture by providing hands-on training to aspiring farmers and thousands of school-age students.
On Craig’s Solano County walnut farm, the Center for Land-Based Learning is raising new crops of land stewards, in the hopes of averting an emerging crisis in California agriculture.
Golden State farmers are graying, and far too few young people are willing to step into a career beset by volatile prices, long hours and complex regulations. Craig, the center’s founder, fears that left alone, these trends could lead to a major sell-off of land within the next decades, threatening production in one of the world’s leading breadbaskets. The answer, he believes, lies in imaginative training and support for future farmers, as well as consumer education.








Craig McNamara is the president and owner of