Los Angeles-based 4Earth Farms has been shoring up resources and expanding its supply deals as it strives to maintain momentum and support its customers, said Mark Munger, vice president of sales and marketing.
“We’ve been investing a lot of time and focus and energy into our supply base — the regions where we’re growing, the partners that we’re growing with,” Munger said.
It’s not enough just to carry a product all year, he said.
“You have to have it in consistent quality and supply year-round,” Munger said. “And with organic, that’s a challenge.”
With global warming top of mind, accompanied by wetter rainstorms, more frequent dry periods and more intense winds, the company is seeking ways to expand and “secure geographic diversity,” Munger said.
Instead of sourcing from one or two areas at any given time, 4Earth Farms is looking at three to five areas in order to be a more reliable supply partner, he said.
“We’ve been very strategic about it — identifying areas and seasons where we felt we had vulnerability and leveraging new areas,” he said.
“We’ve had some big failures,” he said, “but we continue to experiment and do things that have not traditionally been done.”
The patterns and processes growers used to rely on “are not as reliable as they used to be,” he said.
4Earth Farms has been looking to new, high-elevation regions in Mexico for items like Brussels sprouts, which have not been grown there before, to minimize production interruptions, Munger said.
The company expanded into Guatemala a year ago and is putting in protected agriculture like shade houses and hoops to reduce weather risk, he said.
4Earth Farms also has expanded beyond its usual growing region in Baja California into mainland Mexico and higher elevation regions and has expanded U.S. growing regions as well, he said.
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