4 growers redefining success as sustainability

TendWell Farm is owned by two families. At left are Steven Beltram and wife Becca Nestler with their two children, Annabelle and Leo Beltrami. At right are Danielle Hutchison and her three children, Della, Coen and Max Hutchison.
TendWell Farm is owned by two families. At left are Steven Beltram and wife Becca Nestler with their two children, Annabelle and Leo Beltrami. At right are Danielle Hutchison and her three children, Della, Coen and Max Hutchison.
(Photo: Eliza Bell Schweizbach)

In this second installment of The Packer’s ongoing sustainability series, we take a look at four growers — all farming at different scales and redefining success in terms of sustainability.

Cultivating change

Like many people, as an early 20-something, first-generation farmer Steven Beltram didn’t know what he wanted to be when he grew up. He got into organic agriculture by selling extra produce harvested from his one-sixteenth-of-an-acre kitchen garden.

Today, the 40-year-old and business partner Danielle Hutchison — also a first-generation farmer — co-own TendWell Farm in Asheville, N.C., and together, grow, pack and ship approximately 1.5 million pounds of organic tomatoes, peppers, kale, lettuce, fennel and dandelion greens from 200 acres annually.

“In my late teens and early 20s I decided that I wanted to focus on ‘creating the change that I wanted to see’ instead of fighting the ‘bad’ that I saw in the world,” Beltram said. “That led me to an interest in biodiesel, green building and organic agriculture. I had my toe in all three of those fledgling industries in the early 2000s and eventually settled on focusing my efforts on organic agriculture, when I started selling produce in 2008.

“I never planned or anticipated my passion in organic vegetable farming growing into a business of this scale,” Beltram added.

Regenerative agriculture is also near and dear to Beltram.

“As an industry, we are still working on how to best define and measure success with regenerative ag. It is my personal opinion that regenerative ag starts with a solid organic practice and expands upon that,” he said. “It is also my personal opinion that a solid organic practice starts with building — regenerating, if you will — healthy soil.

“I believe that healthy soil is the foundation of organic farming,” Beltram continued. “So, one of the ways that we measure our success is by monitoring our soil through testing and observation. The ultimate goal is for our soils to become healthier and more productive year over year. At the same time, we are producing the healthiest and tastiest produce for our customers.”     

For Beltram, the word “sustainability” is inextricably tied to social responsibility.

“‘People’ is the first word in our triple-bottom-line approach of ‘People. Planet. Profit.’ We strive to create a healthy and positive attitude for all of our team members,” Beltram said.

Drip irrigation around the roots of a tree
“Water is our most expensive single input cost on the farming side,” said Rob Yraceburu, president of Wonderful Orchards. “So, in addition to sustainability, we have an economic incentive to not apply a drop more than the tree needs.” (Photo courtesy of The Wonderful Company)

TendWell seeks to foster a healthy workplace through organic farming its growers can feel good about.

“Don’t get me wrong, this is hard work, but we have a lot of fun doing it,” Beltram said. “We pay our people well, and we are proud to see how many families our small farm supports.”        

TendWell currently sells its produce along the East Coast and says it's actively working to expand its retail programs.

This summer, the grower also launched a small produce stand near its packing shed.

“As with everything we do, we are starting it very humbly,” Beltram said. “It is just an open-air shed, but we are considering enclosing it and building it out into a full store and a place for our community to gather.”     

Building a greener future

When Consalo Family Farms/The Fresh Wave recently expanded its Vineland, N.J., headquarters with additional cold storage and packing facilities, it did so with the environment top of mind.

From water usage to new lighting in its coolers that automatically shuts off when staff isn’t present to packaging reduction and participation in a recycling program, the family-owned and -operated farming company says it is focused on conservation.

“When we recently expanded our headquarters, we kept our materials conservation efforts — our company’s reduction of total material usage as well as disposal — in mind, with simple initiatives like using hand driers in our welfare areas,” said Executive Vice President Chelsea Consalo. “At Consalo Family Farms, we feel that every little endeavor counts towards our green building program.”

Consalo also seeks to reduce its material usage with top-seal packaging for its blueberries. The top-seal contains 35% less plastic than traditional packaging materials, Consalo said.

“Consalo Family Farms and The Fresh Wave are constantly monitoring the latest trends in sustainable packaging,” Consalo said. “Right now, we have been looking into a few new packaging styles, but not without challenges. We are currently doing trials with paper board trays for blueberries that are 100% recyclable. The biggest challenge is ensuring the trays do not affect the quality of the product for the consumer.

“I want the berries to be protected in storage, cooling, transit and ultimately, on the grocery store shelves,” continued Consalo, who participated in a packaging research project in which she gathered data from a multitude of the company’s packaging suppliers on the recycled content in each material to make better purchasing decisions going forward.

Related news: The rise of regenerative — Key concepts to understand an emerging movement

“One of our top sustainability goals for the next few years is choosing new packaging,” Consalo said.

But at Consalo Family Farms, it is water conservation that is a chief source of pride.

“Our advanced drip irrigation systems on the farms deliver the precise amount of water to crops at specific intervals. This eliminates the use of any excess water,” Consalo said.

The team at Consalo Family Farms can monitor water levels using an app on their mobile phones. It also uses meters on all high-flow processes on its combined 2,000 acres of vegetable and blueberry farms.

“We are most proud of our efforts in water conservation and hope to continue setting goals in this area,” Consalo said.

Committed to climate-smart

While “climate-smart ag” tops many of today’s headlines, citrus and avocado grower Limoneira, says it’s been farming sustainably for 130 years.

“We constantly seek to encourage the natural processes that provide health, nutrition, and resilience to our fruit by utilizing the practices and knowledge developed by indigenous cultures around the world as well as modern technological solutions,” said Amy Fukutomi, Limoneira vice president of compliance and corporate secretary.

The Santa Paula, Calif.-based company employs over 40 climate-smart agricultural practices on the 11,100 acres it farms, including cover crops, algae injections, pollinator habitats, compost and integrated pest management.

Limoneira shares its efforts to advance environmental and social responsibility in its annual sustainability report.

“At Limoneira, we are extremely proud of all the hard work and progress that is represented within our Annual Sustainability Report,” Fukutomi said. “We take great pride in the support we are able to provide within our local communities through our many social programs, including educational opportunities, affordable housing and philanthropy. We also continue to strengthen our workforce and our communities through our Limoneira Employee Scholarship Fund, which is available to staff and their dependents.”

Limoneira is also working to diversify its board of directors, Fukutomi said. Today, 43% of its board is represented by women and 75% of its board committees are chaired by women.

On the environmental front, renewable energy plays a key role in the California-based company’s decarbonization strategy.

“Renewable energy … provides us with nearly half, or 44%, of our total electricity,” Fukutimo said. “We have successfully deployed multiple solar installations, and we are continually evaluating further possibilities in renewable power.

“While clean electricity plays a major part in minimizing our carbon emissions, Limoneira is committed to making improvements throughout its operations and supply chain to reduce or eliminate greenhouse gas emissions wherever possible,” she added.

A bee pollinating a plant
“Our blueberry pollination depends on bees,” says Consalo Family Farms Executive Vice President Chelsea Consalo. “Blueberry pollination is contingent on having enough bees active in the field during bloom to deliver pollen. We utilize both honeybees and bumble bees on our blueberry farms.” (Photo courtesy of Consalo Family Farms)

Redefining sustainability

The Wonderful Company, the masterminds behind big produce brands including Wonderful Halos, Pom Wonderful, Wonderful Pistachios and more, has invested hundreds of millions in sustainability in recent years — including a $750 million pledge to Caltech for sustainability research made by co-owners Stewart and Lynda Resnick in 2019 and a $50 million pledge to the University of California, Davis, for sustainability research in 2022.

The Los Angeles-based company has also invested over $400 million in water-efficient irrigation practices, eco-friendly pest control and methods to reduce energy and water use.

To learn more about The Wonderful Company’s ongoing commitment to sustainable farming practices, The Packer recently sat down with Zak Laffite, president of Wonderful Citrus and Rob Yraceburu, president of Wonderful Orchards.

Between the two, Lafitte and Yraceburu oversee farming for 100% of The Wonderful Company’s property in California’s Central Valley, where water conservation is critical.

“The Resnicks have been very committed and have had enormous foresight when it comes to water conservation,” Laffite said. “They’ve also been very committed to the research, so not just finding solutions for today, but also building and investing in the solutions for the future.”

From a water conservation standpoint, Lafitte and Yraceburu say The Wonderful Company is guided by four basic principles: finding favorable locations, where they can mitigate risk; understanding what the plants need so not a drop of water is wasted; 100% efficient irrigation; and having teams exclusively devoted to water management that focus on banking water, floodwater management and sourcing.

Related: Meet the seed-breeders and change-makers driving trends in cultivation

“Water is our most expensive single input cost on the farming side,” Yraceburu said. “So, in addition to sustainability, we have an economic incentive to not apply a drop more than the tree needs.”

When it comes to efficient irrigation, the Resnicks, who today own more than 155,000 acres of farmland, were ahead of the curve.

“The Resnicks bought their first citrus orchard in the late ’70s, but they got into farming in a big way in the ’80s, and they did drip and micro-sprinklers from day one,” Lafitte said.

While today micro-irrigation is common practice, 40 years ago the Resnicks were in the minority — a forward-thinking and environmentally conscious move Lafitte says has helped define the company’s culture.

“It set the stage, culturally within the organization, around looking at how we set ourselves up sustainably over the long term,” he said.

The move “set the tone,” Yraceburu agrees. “So even though we have [a] 100% efficient irrigation system, we haven’t stopped [progressing]. We have R&D teams that are constantly trying new technologies and new ways of getting the most out of every single drop.”

Pollinators

The Wonderful Company also has a robust pollination program.

“We got into the [pollination] business as a vertical integration into our almond farming around 2015,” Yraceburu said. At the time, The Wonderful Company was farming some 45,000 acres of almonds, and there wasn’t a beekeeper large enough to supply the bees it needed to pollinate its orchards.

“The Resnicks said look, we tend to be more efficient if we’re vertically integrated. What would it take to get into the business of doing our own pollination? Over about a three-year time period, we bought four different bee companies,” Yraceburu said.

Related news: Closing the loop — Stemming plastic pollution and fostering a circular economy in produce

Yraceburu said the company has since grown its bee population organically at a rate of about 13% a year.

And as The Wonderful Company is no longer farming 45,000 acres of almonds, it can more than meet its pollination demands with its approximately 80,000 beehives, which equates to 4.5 billion bees, Yraceburu said.

The bees are now sent to other farms in 11 states, including Texas, Mississippi, Florida, Maine, Massachusetts, South and North Dakota, and Minnesota to pollinate other crops.

Renewable energy

When it comes to solar and renewable energy, The Wonderful Company’s goals are ambitious. Currently 10% of the electricity for Wonderful Halos packing facility comes from green energy generation, and the company has submitted permitting projects to the state with the aim to get its entire Delano, Calif., campus 100% under renewable energy in the next few years, Lafitte said.

“If we’re successful in those permits, our goal is to get to 75% [renewable energy] across our farming and packing,” Lafitte said.

As with the company’s water conservation, solar energy provides both an environmental and economic benefit.

“There are two benefits — one is the sustainable piece, but the other is economic. It’s a lot easier to move forward and move forward quickly on sustainability when you have both benefits,” Lafitte said.

The Resnicks have committed to moving all of its U.S. operations to 100% renewable energy by 2025, Lafitte added. The Resnicks’ commitment, along with its generous financial contributions to sustainability research, are part of the company culture, Lafitte says.

“I think those gifts are an example of the culture here,” Lafitte said. “We talked about the Resnicks as early adopters of micro-irrigation and early adopters in the solar space. The goal that all of their U.S. companies are 100% renewable in the next few years is a big challenge, but it’s a challenge that’s driving change.

“The Resnicks’ belief in the power of science and the future of science to ensure that we have a sustainable world going forward … all ties into the culture that drives all of us every day. So, we’re all challenged to look at ways of doing things differently, whether it’s packaging, water, solar — it’s in our core DNA.”


More on these topics: Sustainability | Organic | Packaging

 

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