Masa Fresh a way to ‘shop directly from farmers’

NEWBERG, Ore. (KOIN) — Elee Jen is a chemist. Her husband, Jimmy Jen, has two engineering degrees. Together they’re using the things they learned at Oregon State University for hydroponic farming for Great Harvest Farm.

She adjusts the pH value every day to make sure her butter lettuce and romaine lettuce “are in their optimum place.” He oversees heating, ventilation, air conditioning in the greenhouse.

But there is one area they could use some help.

“We have the land. We know how to grow, we know how to operate, we know how to maintain a facility. But one of the major weakness is the marketing,” Elee said. “We don’t know how to connect to the market. We don’t know how to sell this produce, this premium produce to the customers nearby.”

Enter Trang Ho and the business she co-founded, Masa Fresh. It’s a way of connecting farmer to more customers with the click of a mouse.

“Each farmer actually can sign up, have an account, have a dashboard where they can upload their products at their prices, choose their own pickup or delivery routes,” Trang Ho said.

“Masa Fresh is a membership-based online farmer’s market,” she said. “For $24 a year, you can shop directly from local farmers and producers.”

Trang’s goal is to elevate local farmers.

“What’s different about us is that we are not a store. So we don’t buy products from vendors and then resell them. It’s a marketplace platform,” she said.”

Starting Masa Fresh — which honors Japanese farmer and philosopher Masa-Nobu Fukuoka — in this region is no accident.

“I actually chose to move here to Portland, Oregon for the business because I just know that there’s so many local farms and I also know that the community is so supportive of this movement,” Trang said.

She and her co-founder admired how Masa embraced natural farming as a productive method that can also regenerate the ecosystem.