Anya Fernald

Anya Fernald (born 1975)[1] is an American entrepreneur, chef, and sustainable agriculture expert based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

When she was 3 years old, her family moved back to the United States, eventually settling in Palo Alto, California, and then Oregon.

[2] After graduating from Wesleyan University with a degree in political science,[3] she received a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, leading to work as an itinerant cheesemaker in Europe and North Africa.

[4][5] Soon after returning to California in 2006, Fernald founded a produce distribution company connecting high-quality farmers to large institutional buyers, which was later acquired.

[2][5][9] In 2010, the company began working with Todd Robinson to develop a concept to market products from a ranch he owned in Northern California.

The USDA had begun federal investigations into Belcampo for various violations, including sanitation, safety, and labeling at their Siskiyou County plant, leading up to its closure in 2021.