Rev. Tarlesson is a co-founder and Executive Director of National Economic and Social Development Action Committee (NESDAC). He is the founder of U-Farm and Home, LLC. He is a regenerative, organic farmer in California and traditional (no-till, dry/rain-fall) farmer in Liberia. President of Tarlesson Farms and Market, LLC (formerly Tarlesson Farms), California.

Rev. Tarlesson is a devoted agricultural racial equity, farmer justice, human rights and refugee rights advocate. At the invitation of Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC)'s 7th national conference, May 16, 2001, at the Washington Plaza Hotel, 10 Thomas Circle, N.W., Washington, DC, Rev. Tarlesson presented his California Agricultural Settlement Plan for refugees, to an estimated 200 representatives of local, state and international refugee service providers, voluntary agencies, and officials. Immediately after returning from Washington, D.C. for the ECDC's 7th annual conference, Rev. Tarlesson and the University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE) and other strategic partners began working together on the creation and implementation of farmer, rancher, Managerial and farmworker training project the Agricultural Settlement Community (ASC) for refugees and African Americans in California, 2001-2004.

On July 19, 2004, in Washington D.C., the U.S. Office of Refugees Resettlement (ORR), Washington, DC, Rev. Roosevelt Tarlesson, was one of the representatives representing 30 organizations/agencies signed on the Rural Initiative for Refugees the national refugee farming initiative in the United States.

In 2007, Rev. Tarlesson used his 50 acres organic farm to launch a farmer, rancher and flexible worker training project, which became the National Economic and Social Development Action Committee (NESDAC).

Rev. Roosevelt Tarlesson (Tarlesson Farms), is one of the first farmers in the United States to participate in the USDA National Organic Program (NOP) 2008, and completed most of the practices.