Who We Are
David Mas Masumoto
Biography - Short Version
David Mas Masumoto is an organic peach and grape farmer and the author of four books including: Heirlooms, Letters to the Valley, Four Seasons in Five Senses, Harvest Son, and Epitaph for a Peach. His new book, Wisdom of the Last Farmer, will be published in August, 2009.
A third generation farmer, Masumoto grows peaches, nectarines, grapes and raisins on an organic 80 acre farm south of Fresno, California. Masumoto is currently a columnist for and The Fresno Bee. He was a Kellogg Foundation Food and Society Policy Fellow from 2006-2008. His writing awards include Commonwealth Club Silver medal, Julia Child Cookbook award, the James Clavell Literacy Award and a finalist in the James Beard Foundation awards. He received the “Award of Distinction” from UC Davis in 2003 and the California Central Valley "Excellence in Business" Award in 2007. He is currently a board member of the James Irvine Foundation and serves on the Statewide Leadership Council to the Public Policy Institute of California. He has served as chair of the California Council for the Humanities. Masumoto (55) is married to Marcy Masumoto, Ed.d., and they have a daughter, Nikiko, 23, and a son, Korio, 17.
email: masmasumoto@gmail.com
website: www.masumoto.com
Biography - Long Version
A third generation farmer, Masumoto (54) grows certified organic peaches, nectarines, grapes and raisins. He works with his family on their organic 80 acre farm south of Fresno, California and also helps care for his parents who still live on the family farm.
Masumoto is currently a columnist for and The Fresno Bee has written for New York Times Magazine, USA Today and Los Angeles Times. His other books include Silent Strength (1984), Home Bound (1989) and Country Voices, The Oral History of a Japanese American Family Farm Community (1987). He received the James Clavell Japanese American National Literacy Award in 1986.
Epitaph for a Peach won the 1995 Julia Child Cookbook Award in the Literary Food Writing category and was a finalist for the 1996 James Beard Foundation Food Writing Award. It was also received the San Francisco Review of Books Critics' Choice Award 1995-96. A German translation edition of Epitaph for a Peach was published in 1997.
Harvest Son won a Commonwealth Club of California silver medal for the California Book Awards in 1999 and was a finalist for the Asian American Writers' Workshop award in New York.
In 2002, Masumoto was appointed to the James Irvine Foundation Board of Directors. He also currently serves on the Statewide Leadership Council to the Public Policy Institute of California. He was a Kellogg Foundation Food and Society Policy Fellow from 2006-2008. Previously, he was appointed to the California Council for the Humanities board in 1994 and served as Co-Chair from 1998 to 2001. He also served on the board of the Campaign for College Opportunity from 2005-2008. He wrote, designed and curated the museum exhibition, "Country Voices, Three Generations of Family Farmers" which appeared at the Fresno Metropolitan Museum (1992) and the Japanese American National Museum (1993) in Los Angeles.
In 2007, Masumoto was awarded a national Food and Society Policy Fellowship from the Thomas Jefferson Agricultural Institute, funded by the Kellogg Foundation.
Masumoto has a bachelors degree in sociology from U.C. Berkeley and a masters degree in community development from U.C. Davis and attended International University in Tokyo, Japan.
He has been the key note speaker at many diverse conferences including International Association of Culinary Professionals, National Trust for Historic Preservation, Internationales Literature festival Berlin, Culinary Institute of America, American Association of Museums, American Institute of Wine and Food, Dance USA, Ag. in the Classroom National Conference, Chamber Music Society of America, Calif. Teachers of English and Japanese American National Museum. He also was awarded a Breadloaf Writers Conference fellowship in 1996. He has also visited numerous schools delivering presentations and teaching in classes including guest speaker at U.C Berkeley and U.C. Merced. He was a writer in residence at Iolani School in Honolulu, Hawaii in 2004.
Feature articles about Masumoto have appeared in Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Time Magazine and New York Times. His farm has been featured Sunset, Country Living and Glamour Magazines. He has been on NPR's All Things Considered and on television as part of the PBS California Heartland and America's Heartland series as well as the nationally aired PBS documentary "Ripe for Change."
Masumoto won the University of California, Davis “Award of Distinction” from the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences in 2003, the California Central Valley "Excellence in Business" Award in 2007, and “Steward of Sustainable Agriculture” award from the Ecological Farming Association in 2008. He was a founding member of California Association of Family Farmers. He has served on the California Tree Fruit Agreement research board and has been a member of the Raisin Advisory Committee research board.
Masumoto (55) and his wife, Marcy Masumoto, EdD., (53), have two children, Nikiko (23) and Korio (17). They reside in an 90 year old farmhouse surrounded by their vineyards and orchards just outside of Del Rey, California which is 20 miles south of Fresno.
Marcy (Thieleke) Masumoto
As co-owner of Masumoto Family Farm, Marcy Masumoto has been responsible
for the selection of peach varieties, developing recipes and peach products,
and is actively involved with management and seasonal fieldwork. She hand-packs
our specialty peaches with Nikiko and Korio each summer. She has cooked
with many varieties of peaches, perfecting recipes and methods of working
with large quantities of fresh, tree-ripened peaches. See
Marcy's recipes at this link. She grew up on a family goat dairy and learned how to cook,
bake and preserve foods at an early age.
Off the farm, she has worked in the health and education fields, starting as
a nutrition advisor. She currently works at the Central
Valley Educational Leadership Institute at CSU Fresno focusing on improving
education in Central and rural California. She holds a bachelor's degree in public
health education with a minor in nutrition from Loma Linda University, a master's
degree in Community Development from UC Davis, and a doctorate in Educational
Leadership from UC Davis and CSU Fresno. Read
about her doctoral research.
Mother of two (Nikiko, 23, and Korio, 17) and wife of Mas, Marcy is comfortable
living on the farm and enjoys entertaining and gardening, in addition to cooking
in the family's farmhouse kitchen.
Nikiko Masumoto
Nikiko Masumoto first learned to love food as a young child slurping the nectar of overripe organic peaches on the Masumoto Family Farm. Since then she has never missed a harvest. In 2007 she graduated from UC Berkeley with a B.A. in Gender and Women’s Studies and is currently attending Graduate School at the University of Texas, Austin (MA Performance as Public Practice). Her work focusses on the intersections of performance, social justice, and memory through research on Japanese American Redress and other related topics. Her long-term plans include returning to the Valley to farm with her father. She hopes to grow her passions for performance and social justice along with peaches, nectarines and grapes to add another generation's voice to the story of the Masumoto Family Farm. She is at heart a 'farm kid' and can never imagine abandoning these ties. For Nikiko sharing food is a revolutionary act, she says, "When we grow, share, and eat food, there are no borders. We become part of each other."
Korio Masumoto
Kori is a student at Sanger High School; he intends to graduate in 2010. His favorite part of school is meeting new people and socializing. Through this he has learned to appreciate and support cultural diversity beyond is own multi-faceted identities. He excels in long distance running and has recently discovered a passion for learning languages and creating music videos. Right now he is interested in becoming a teacher. Kori has always helped on the farm, especially during the summer. In his free time, Kori loves to share lunch with his grandparents, and is the family jokester.