Fortune Growers, Mexico help small growers with app, collaboration, food safety

Expect more cooperation between some big-picture thinkers and Mexican growers of small and medium-sized farms.

Fortune Growers, Elgin, Ill., sources vegetables from 52 independent vegetable growers in Mexico for the North American market. The company is leveraging its technology know-how to provide small and medium growers with better access to large companies to buy and export their food in several ways.

One way to do that: Fortune Growers is participating in the Agro-Oferta initiative created by the Mexican government’s Servicio de Información Agroalimentaria y Pesquera, or Agrifood and Fisheries Information Service (SIAP).

Agro-Oferta is a mobile app that connects growers and buyers.

“How do we keep families together? Here, the focus is on small and medium-sized growers,” said Fortune Growers president Luis Solarte during a virtual press conference.

“How do we get all this product to the consumer, with scalability and cost in a way that’s a win-win for everybody?”

These are important questions that affect a lot of people in the North American supply chain, from Mexico to the U.S. to Canada.

First, this Agro Oferta platform allows producers to upload information about their products, Patricia Ornelas, SIAP director, said through a translator.

“We’re trying reduce the brokerage fees to benefit smaller and medium producers,” she said.

Advantages include removing brokers; no minimum volume required to sell products; program is free with no fees or transaction limits; and it enhances international trade.

The app can be used through Android, iOS and desktop.

“It’s a good platform to compare prices of products,” Ornelas said. “If you have a product you want to introduce to the market, you can use this application. All you do is to register for an account to buy or sell.”

In 2020, about 190,000 truckloads of fresh produce passed from Mexico through Texas crossings, said Dante Galeazzi, president and CEO of Texas International Produce Association.

“That’s a lot of produce,” he said.

Now, governments, companies, produce associations and produce-related organizations are collaborating to share their findings and create more cooperation.

“We have to share our best practices to all users. That’s why we’re really excited about this project, to bring food safety understanding to all our growers regardless of their size and regardless of where they’re operating,” Galeazzi said. “This project is the harmonization of food safety with all three countries.”

In the SIAP-Fortune Growers pilot project, participating farmers with the target crop portfolio will receive training, financing and other support from Fortune Growers to make this initiative a success.

A second initiative is an alliance with Mexican public universities through the agriculture department and Fortune Growers. It seeks to create a network of support and training with agronomists, food engineers and in-network Mexican farmers, onsite.

These professionals took their small model to Netherlands to study, said Javier Delgado, director of Fideicomiso de Riesgo Compartido, the shared-risk trust for agribusiness and rural development through Mexico’s Secretary of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food.

“We made the diagnosis that we were producing what the market demands and mostly for export,” Delgado said.

There are plans for a private investment-funded AgroLogistics Park.

“We tried to do economies of scale to reduce distribution costs and increase efficiencies,” he said.

And finally, Fortune Growers is working with Mexico’s Servicio Nacional de Sanidad, Inocuidad y Calidad (SENASICA), or National Health Service, Food Safety and Quality.

The goal is to simplify the transport and export of fresh Mexican produce to the tables of the North American consumer, Solarte said. SENASICA and its quality assurance processes are seeking recognition with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and FDA.

US Foods, Sysco and Walmart have pilot projects with Fortune Growers related to some of these initiatives, he said.

“We’re using good agricultural practices and complying with SENESICA and USDA to have traceability,” Solarte said.