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Driscolls One Family philosophy has played a key role in helping the company navigate challenges such as labor standards, immigration reform and water stewardship. We spoke to Soren Bjorn, President of Driscoll's of the Americas, about the impact it has had on the farming communities who produce its berries.

From its humble beginnings as a small family business more than a century ago,Driscolls has become a major producer of berriesin the US and beyond. But the ideas of family and community still play a keyrole in Driscolls business philosophy especially as it navigates increasinglychallenging issues such as labor standards, immigration reform and waterstewardship. While agriculture can bring work and prosperity to a community, itcan also put a strain on precious resources such as water. And while there maybe regulations in place to ensure workers receive the financial and healthbenefits they are entitled to, making sure this happens can be a very differentstory.

We spoke to Soren Bjorn, President of Driscoll's of the Americas, about thecompanys One Family approach, andto find out more about the impact it was having on the farming communities whoproduce the berries we eat.

Soren Bjorn: In our business, we work in a number of different countries,and while there may be laws and regulations in place, we often see varyingdegrees of enforcement and compliance. In Morocco, for example, many of thefarmworkers were not even registered with the state; and so, had no socialsecurity or registration number. This meant that although social security wasbeing paid on their behalf, the workers had no way of ever getting the benefits.So, we worked to get individuals registered to make sure that they will beeligible for these benefits one day.

In Mexico, in a lot of the smaller communities, there may not even be ahealth clinic meaning that although the grower is paying for health benefitson behalf of the workforce, the workers wont receive any benefit. To deal withthat, in some instances, we would pay to get a clinic up and running and fundthe infrastructure required to make sure the workers receive those healthbenefits.

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If you want to drive meaningful change, you need to address these underlyingissues. This is why you sometimes need to draw the circle around your businessmuch wider and think beyond the narrow economic impact.

SB: Working in agriculture, we have to consider not just the water on thefarm; but also ask if the community has enough water to sustain itself. InBaja, California, for example, there was not enough water in the community;so we made a decision not to increase our footprint in that region unless wecould find a more sustainable source of water. For five years, even though therewas a demand for more berries, we didn't increase our footprint. More recently,our largest grower in the region developed an ocean water plant; which allows usto grow more berries, but also to return that supply of water back to thecommunity.

We've been involved with Ceres for quite a long time. In Watsonville, inthe Pajaro Valley, both agriculture and the community depend on the aquiferfor water, as there is no pipeline to bring water in. This aquifer issignificantly overdrawn, so we wanted to help solve that problem as part of thecommunity. We worked with Ceres on this and also as advocates for thegroundwater legislation that passed in California five years ago. Through that,we got introduced to the AgWaterchallenge.

By joining this challenge, we get to work with others who are already facingsimilar issues and get access to their expertise, as well as a lot of greatideas. There is also the pressure of having to make progress, and thats wherethe challenge part comes in. Water stewardship is not an individual businessissue, but a community and a societal one. To be able to tap into all theseother resources is absolutely critical to meeting the challenge.

SB: That was a really interesting project and one I was very involved inpersonally. We were originally trying to tell the story of our company throughthe voices of our growers. But it became clear when we went out to film thisdocumentary that labor and immigration issues were what everybody wanted to talkabout. We saw this as an opportunity not to advocate for or criticize anyspecific policy, but to shine the light on an issue that we think is critical not just for our business, but for society at large.

In the US today, we are very fortunate to have absolute food security. We are asubstantial net exporter of food; and if we want to maintain that status, weshould do everything within our power to try to protect it. If we want the freshfruits and vegetables that we consume to mostly be grown in this country, weneed immigration reform. The reality is that 75 percent of all the fruit andvegetables grown in the US are still harvested by hand, and the vast majority ofthe people who do that work are immigrants to this country.

If we, as a society, make the choice that we dont want immigrants here doingthat work, we also have to recognize that we are choosing not to have that foodproduction here. This means that we would be relying on imports for a wholerange of commodities.

Even if a person generally takes an anti-immigration stance, they probably donthave an anti-food security stance. But they dont make the connection. When weshow the documentary, it is always done with the intention of having a reallygood dialogue, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

Immigration reform, particularly for agriculture, could easily happen. There isa pretty good bill that just passed in the house of representatives withbilateral, cross-party support.

Although we want to solve the problems in agriculture, we are also aware that itis part of a larger issue about immigration.

SB: Because of our business model, our growers are not in a contract withus. It is much more of a partnership, where we are both trying to delightconsumers in the marketplace and have the consumers reward us for that. And weshare that revenue with the growers. In fact, 80-85 percent of the revenue goesback to the growers in their local community. So, the single largest impact weare having in the community is through the success of the independent grower.

I'll give you an example. We grow berries in a small village in the south ofChina. For 1,200 years, they have grown only rice commercially in thatcommunity. If you grow an acre of rice in the south of China, the revenue yougenerate is somewhere around $1,000 per acre. Today, we have growers in thatcommunity growing Driscolls raspberries and the revenue that comes from thatone acre is somewhere between $60,000-80,000. In our model, 85 percent of thatrevenue goes back to the grower in that community to pay for wages, land andother inputs. This means more money for people to spend at the butchers; so thebutcher gets wealthier and has a lot more money for the people that own therental properties, so they can develop new properties and so forth. The impactthis has on the broader community is tremendous.

Another example is in Mexico, where we have mobile medical clinics drivingaround the fields providing basic health services to people that otherwise wouldnot have any health services. This led us to partner up with the ColgateFoundation in Mexico, which had always provided basic dental services tochildren. We asked if they would be interested in serving the farmworkercommunity. We have now partnered up with an NGO that goes out in the field;offering training in how to care for your teeth, as well as providing basicservices. And we have recently done the same thing on eyecare.

So, what started as a mobile clinic has mushroomed into a host of services for acommunity that previously couldnt access those services. And this isn'thappening with our money; it is happening because people are doing a really goodjob of connecting the pieces together. So, I think that is an example ofsomething that is really exciting, because it creates a much healthiercommunity.

Published Jan 30, 2020 7am EST / 4am PST / 12pm GMT / 1pm CET

This article, produced in cooperation with the Sustainable Brands editorial team, has been paid for by one of our sponsors.

Originally posted here:
One Family: How Driscoll's Is Working to Safeguard Its Farming Communities - Sustainable Brands