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Tonya Antle

Like the Paviches, Tonya Antle grows up in a farming family in Delano. She begins a career in

marketing before meeting and marrying Tom Pavich. Then she turns into a self-described cheerleader

for organic, the first to sell to supermarkets. Persisting through years of “No, No, No” Pavich Family

Farms becomes the “hottest thing in the market.” After splitting from Tom, Tonya does it again even

bigger at Earthbound Farm, realizing her vision of making organic for all people.

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No Cartoons on Saturday Morning Family Farms

I was born and raised a farmer’s daughter in Delano, California. Saturdays were not about cornflakes

and cartoons for us. It was out to the farm. Everyone had assigned jobs: raking hay, cultivating cotton,

plowing vineyards, or harvesting crops. We learned early on to have a great work ethic, but it also taught

me that there was something better for me out there. I didn’t want to be doing that full time forever. So

when I graduated from high school, heading for UC Irvine, I thought, I’m getting the heck out of Dodge!

But after graduating from college, I was drawn to stay in the food business. Something about it calls out

passion. I was fortunate that I got called back.

I had an opportunity through a Christmas gift from my parents to take a great sales course on produce

from our industry expert, Pete Purcell. He said, “You’re a natural. Here are three names in the produce

industry you need to talk to immediately. Someone will hire you.”

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One was Frieda Caplan, who was one of the first marketers of specialty produce and the first female

owned business in the produce industry.1 She and her daughter Karen pretty much hired me on the spot.

I felt a great sense of relief to be with an all-female company and see people so passionate about food

and changing the way Americans eat – and even thinking about eating. It was a change from simply

creating food on the farm to understanding how our food is dispersed in the marketplace. To see the

product actually “communicating” directly with consumers: that was very powerful.

While working there, I met and fell in love with my future husband, Tom Pavich, and eventually I left

Frieda’s and started working for the Pavich family. Tom’s brother, Steve, introduced me to organics. I

joined the family in the early ’80s when farming operations throughout the valley were all conventional:

agro business at its finest. Amazingly, Steve talked his father into giving him a piece of land to convert

to organic. “Let’s adopt organic practices and change the way we’re growing. Let me prove that

conventional is not right. Tonya, you help me sell it.” At the time the organic market was primarily

smaller mom and pop natural food stores and co-ops.

1 Frieda Caplan initiated Frieda’s Finest/Specialty Produce in 1962 in Los Angeles, one of few women in the field

at the time. See more at http://www.friedas.com/our-story.

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Steve Pavich was truly the pioneer in organics in Kern County. The first thing Steve did was paint this

huge water tower on the farm with the ecology sign. I don't know if anyone in the younger generation

now even knows what that is. Farmers were driving by, going, “What the heck is Steve Pavich doing?

Those damn hippies!” The coffee shop conversation was always filled with this sense of controversy:

“What is Steve Pavich doing today?” Steve just smiled at the naysayers and forged ahead.

Whenever I’d stop by to visit my own family it’s like, “What is your brother in

law doing?” And I said, “He’s going to change the way America eats and it’s a

pretty cool thing. You guys ought to learn about it.” He goes, “Oh, there’s a

bunch of weeds. It’s not precision.” It’s like, “That’s not what it’s all about. It’s

all about the soil and making sure there’s beneficial insects. It’s a whole life going

on there.” Conventional farmers could not get it. My dad was from the navy. If it

moved you sprayed it, if not you painted it. I was like, “Yes sir.”

Steve’s passion was addictive. There’s a fine line between passion and genius, and I was taken by both.

He was like a pied piper. Why wouldn’t we want to follow him? He’d get us excited about the story, and

that helped me talk about organics with customers, telling the story of this forward-thinking farmer. I

think he enjoyed being a teacher whenever consumers and environmentalists visited.

Selling Organics to the World

My own discovery about organics came through Steve’s lessons, understanding what pesticides

and herbicides were doing to plants. When you learn the art of organic agriculture, you see that it comes

from the soil up, that healthy soil is the basis for the principles of organic. When you’re spraying the

soil, you’re killing everything. Literally, we took shovels into the organic field and turned it over, and

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we saw all this great activity, earthworms and microbial things just crawling around, and it smelled like

earth, like you remember as a kid. Then you go across the road to the neighbors, you shovel it, turn it

over, and you see this gray stuff barely holding up the vine. You think, “Which one would you rather be

growing in?”

At Frieda’s I’d learned that if you can tell the right story to consumers about having choices in grocery

stores, they’d be willing to listen. I took that marketing strategy with specialty foods and applied it to the

organic category. In those days there were no numbers to prove that organic was the right way to go, so

we needed storytelling. I spoke from my heart as both a mother and the primary shopper. “For me to get

organics,” I’d say, “I have to put my kids in a car and drive to Mrs. Gooch’s two hours away in Southern

California so I can fill my baskets with organic items because there’s nothing available nearby. If I’m

doing this, I assume other consumers feel the same way. So Mr. Retailer, I think you should try organics

in your store.” Over time, whether at the dinner table or in meetings or on tours, I’d pick up new

information and feel, “Yeah, we’re on the right path.” As the marketer and as a mother, I thought, “Of

course we want to do this. It’s all about health and nutrition. This is life!” That was my epiphany.

At the time I was the only person selling organic in the commercial arena that I’m aware of, except

maybe Bu Nygrens at Veritable Vegetable. Before that, it was only happening in the counter culture.

Nobody risked talking to the Safeways, the Stop & Shops, the Dominick’s. I thought, what can it hurt to

reach out to them?

The Paviches were still selling the majority of their table grapes as conventional produce and I’d already

gotten the attention of mass-market supermarkets because I was selling them these great quality grapes.

As we converted more acres from conventional to organic, we presented the organic produce as

conventional without them even knowing it because our organic supply was too big for the current

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market. Later we snuck in these cute little stem tags that said, “These delicious, sunshine grapes were

grown naturally, the way Mother Nature intended for you to enjoy grapes. Enjoy! The Pavich family.”

Then we started getting amazing consumer letters. “Thank you so much for growing these naturally and

doing something good for Mother Nature. These were the best grapes I’ve ever eaten.” It was like,

Bingo! I was copying all these letters and clipping them together with a cover letter, then sending them

to retailers, saying, “For every one of these people that thought about sending us a letter there’s probably

ten more people that would also want to write a letter, but don’t have the time. You really should

consider having organics in your department.”

Of course, initially the organics were met with a lot of negativity. Produce leaders would ask, “If I put

organics in this area, what will that mean for the rest of my department?” Or “Organics are bullshit,” or

“That’s just for mom and pop stores.” I heard, “No, no, no, no.” But I had the kind of personality to say,

“Okay, it’s no for now. Here’s my card. When you’re ready, I’ll be back.” If you keep it open and

friendly for them and don’t close the door, it could lead to an opportunity to continue talking.

I’m very proud that the very first mass market supermarket to buy volume organics was through me, at

Stop & Shop. It was the late ’80s and I got a call I was waiting for.

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“Tonya, this is Harold Alston from Stop & Shop. I’m hearing about this store called Bread and Circus.

Have you heard of them?”

(laughs) “Yes, Harold, I sell to them every day.”

“I want you to come talk to me about organics. I think I’m losing shoppers to them.”

Here we go! Harold Alston was a leader in the industry. People watched everything he did.

At the same time as we got in with Stop & Shop, Steve was adding more acres into the program. He saw

a quantum leap in growth as we were starting to make headway in stores. I used Harold Alston as a

testimonial and went to Dick Spazano, the head of Von’s supermarkets in Southern California. He took

a chance on us because Harold had taken a chance on us. Then we went to Dan Hamilton of HEB in

Texas. And then to Tony Misasi of Grand Union in New York, the big mover and shaker at the time.

I called all of Harold’s industry friends who were part of the forward-thinking industry elite, always at

the cutting edge of something new in retail. They helped give us our start.

Ever Expanding Market Opportunities – and Challenges

Next we figure out that people up north often go on vacation in Florida, so we went to Publix and said,

“If these people from Grand Union and Stop & Shop are going to Florida on holiday for the winter and

they can't find their organics there, what a disappointment. You should have organics.” I came up with

whatever story I could to get an appointment and talk about organics. We were excited to be at the party.

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My handle became “Organic 911” because it was such an urgency. From a production standpoint we had

enough organics now that we could convert mass market supermarket people to organic. Steve was

moving fast in that conversion, along with Tom in operations, so there was an urgency to sell more into

the pipeline. At the same time, I’d started receiving urgent phone calls. “I need you to come and talk to

me about organics.” “Love to.” We were the hottest thing in the market. We did a lot of high-fiving.

It wasn’t all easy, by any means. These new trends with the big supermarkets were mostly on the East

and West coasts, with some in Texas, which adopted organics early with HEB. I thought the next step

would be Chicago since a lot of the Midwesterners wanted that East Coast feel. I called the largest

retailer of its time there, called Dominicks. “I’d like to come talk to you about organics.” They said,

“Sure, come on out.” I walked into a boardroom filled with men in black suits, with white shirts and thin

black ties. They each had a piece of paper in front of them with a pen across it. Their arms were crossed

– ominous body language – and everybody was smoking a cigarette. I thought, “I don’t think this is

going to go so well.”

When I get done, the senior director of produce walks up to me. I stood up to shake his hand, but

instead, he puts his hand on my ass and goes, “This is a meat and potatoes kind of town. Got time for a

cocktail?” I grabbed his hand and said, “I’m so flattered, but no thank you. When you’re ready, I’ll be

back.” I got out of that office as fast as I could and literally cried all the way to the airport. I’d been

intimidated and hated having been belittled in front of the entire buying staff.

Now roll forward. A year later I get a phone call. “Tonya, this is So-and-so from Dominicks. I

understand you’re the one to talk to about organics. Can you come talk to me?” “Sure, I’d be happy to.”

I fly out. I walk into the exact same boardroom. This time nobody is wearing a suit. Everyone’s wearing

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a casual sports shirt. No one’s smoking. But the funny thing is that they’re all sitting in the exact same

chairs. This time they’re writing copious notes, hanging on every word I say. I thought, “Okay, this is

good.”

I mentioned to one of the buyers, “The last time I was here, Steve, we were talking about the benefits of

organic grapes. Do you remember?”

Somebody goes, “You’ve never been here before.”

I replied, “I thought I was more memorable than that.”

Steve says, “I’ll be right back.” He left the room, and when he came back, he had my card. “I am so

sorry,” he says, “I keep every card of everybody I’ve ever met. I’m so sorry.”

I go, “You weren’t ready then, but you are now. That’s why I’m here. This is good. Sit down. Let’s

finish this.”

Landing Dominicks as an account was the biggest Yahtzee win of the year. In the next twelve months

we did over a million dollars in business with them, and they had to write a special business report

because it was such an anomaly. That Chicago story turned out to be a great success.

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Another dark story happened for me in Montreal. This was in the early days when we were on tight

budgets. I was getting the best possible deals with flights and cheap cars rentals, living out of my

suitcase. It was ugly. I get to Montreal and walk into the office. I tell the secretary I was there for my

appointment with the director of produce. She says, “I’m so sorry. He’s on vacation this week.”

I insisted, “But I confirmed with him just last Friday.”

She goes, “I’m so, so sorry.”

He had done this to me on purpose. It was another big lesson: if you’re going to play with the big boys,

you might get burned.

Well, next thing he knows, I’m selling to his competition. I get a call, “What do you mean by selling to

my competition?” I said, “Maybe if you’d showed up for our appointment, you could have been first.

Now would you like me to come talk to you?”

Then there was the L.A. City Council during the time of the grape boycott. I get a call from Bruce

Obink, the director of the table grape commission for California. “Tonya, they’re going to vote in the

LA City Council tomorrow on whether or not they’ll have a grape-free city for a week. Everybody’s so

busy harvesting right now, I can’t get a grower to go to LA. I need you to go tell the story of why they

shouldn’t boycott grapes. The UFW and the Teamsters will be there for a big showdown.” I asked, “Are

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you sure you want me to do it?” “Yeah, you’ll be perfect. Talk to them about the benefits of California

table grapes.”

So I drove to L.A. and showed up at the City Council to find the UFW on one side and the teamsters on

the other side. At the meeting, everybody’s pitching their story about pesticides and why they need to

boycott grapes. They weren’t focusing on unionization. They were talking about pesticides. I thought,

“Perfect. I know the alternative.” I take the mike and introduce myself, representing Pavich. I say,

“We’re the largest organic farmers of table grapes in California as well as the nation, and I’m here to

talk to you about a solution to your problem: organic table grapes. We have enough to supply the entire

city of Los Angeles for the week that you’re talking about. We’re the perfect solution to the pesticides

that the UFW’s talking about. So instead of boycotting grapes entirely, consider accepting organic

grapes.”

One of the council members, Jackie Goldberg, said, “But you’re non-union.” I said, “We’re a small

family operation, directly in touch with all of our farm workers. We pay competitive wages. They’re

working in a very healthy environment, so they don’t have to worry about getting sick or taking these

pesticides home to their family. They’ve chosen to work with us, and they’re happy. There’s no better

reason why you should support organics.” They took the vote, and we won: organic grapes only for the

school districts and all the government buildings for that designated time period. I said, “Thank you very

much,” and ran to my car because the UFW and these big guys in the teamster jackets were not happy

with me.

I was driving home, listening to the news on the radio, and I hear, “Tonya Pavich just passed organic

grapes through the City Council.” Bruce Obink called and yelled at me. I said, “You sent me! We got

some grapes. Isn’t that better than zero grapes?” They just happened to be ours. It was a great day.

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Becoming the First Marketer in the Organic Grower-Packer-Shipper Model

Every year the organic community gathers for the Ecological Farming Conference. I was invited to talk

about marketing. They wanted me to talk about taking organics to conventional supermarkets.

Someone asked, “I’ve been trying to get an appointment with Dick Spazano for months. I even sat in his

waiting room for days, but he just kept walking by me, ignoring me. How’d you do it?”

That question opened doors. I said, “I bet you’re a great organic farmer but you probably need someone

to help serve as a bridge, someone user-friendly with the conventional industry. I think I’m your gal.

Listen, you might be the best radicchio farmer or the best melon grower in the world. You need to do

what you do best, and let me do what I do best. Let us help you sell your crops.”

That really was the genesis of Pavich expanding beyond just grapes. We were a trusted brand. We were

a great resource to the community. I’d done a lot of education with retailers on what to do with organics

and why it was important to have them. Now the next step was, you need more and different organic

produce in your store. We developed a marketing arm to our grower-packer-shipper program, under the

label Ambrosia Produce, and then we called all the original “O Pioneers” in the organic community and

said, “If you have enough extra crops, we’d love to sell it to the mass market.”

At first, I was met with a lot of no’s. “We’re not big enough.” “We don’t need you.” Or “We don’t need

any more customers.” I’d insist, “You always need more customers.” My first discussion with Danny

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Duncan from Cal Organic was like that. He said, “Thanks, but I don’t need any more customers.” I told

him, “Danny, you’re growing; you need more customers. Let me help you. If you don’t want to talk to

them, let me talk to them.” Eventually, I got Cal Organic into three supermarkets: Stop & Shop, HEB,

and Von’s.

We started marketing other items: apples from Washington; tree fruit and citrus from the San Joaquin

Valley; vegetable row crops from the Salinas Valley… We had a full portfolio of products we could

now ship. Soon retailers wanted us to provide full organic programs. Tom Pavich then suggested, “Let’s

brand more under ‘Pavich.’” We first went to carrot growers and said, “Can we sell your organic carrots

under our brand?” That development took off and created a nice revenue stream. It also kept the sales

staff busy and made money during the off season for grapes.

Part of the fun of this industry is the relationships with our customers. Selling in the organic community

we became very close-knit, maybe because we were so small at first, like a family, and so different from

the conventional farming world, even at odds with it. We relied on sharing stories and advice. Who are

you selling to? How’s it going?

Veritable Vegetable is a great example. To this day I consider Bu Nygrens someone I completely respect

and really love as a long-time trusted friend. We were on the Organic Trade Association board together.

Our history is long and rich with the good, the bad and the ugly of what happens in the industry. I’ve

been as much yelled at as hugged by Bu, because she’d be mad at us about something and then get over

it. But she also pushed me in good ways. She pushed me to give her something different than what

everybody else had. We created the “tote,” for example, a cute lunchbox-like tote made of paper, not

plastic, and with a handle. It looked like you’d hand-picked the food from your garden. I give Bu a lot of

credit because she made us think about marketing in a different way.

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Alar Stimulates the Rise of Big Organic – and the Organic Farm Bill

After the Alar apple scare in 1988 we had a big spike in sales.2 More consumers now wanted organic in

their diet; and some never turned back. We measured new growth in different ways. In the past we had

“core” customers who’d buy organic whenever possible. Now we had the “crossover” shopper, typically

a conventional purchaser who had heard or read about organics, or saw “organic” on a grape ad, maybe

had a great experience, so they wanted to add more organic produce to their diet, but not 100%.

Crossover shoppers still exist today. Now they’re looking at a bigger breadth of products, creating

growth and opportunity for the category.

Another way we saw growth was in agriculture that was converting land from conventional to organic.

More growers started getting into organic, adding more land. At the same time, around 1990, mass-

market retailers like Safeway and Kroger were saying, “Hey, we’re multistate operators. You have 33

different definitions of organic in the nation. That’s 33 different state laws, and 33 different ways to

handle and sell organics. We can’t work like that! Why don’t you go to government and get yourselves

standards, uniformity, and a national law, something we can all understand and work with. Then we’ll

feel much more comfortable with you.”

From writing the farm bill to implementation in 2001 it took ten years! Gotta love government inaction.

Steve was very much a part of that process. The industry said, “We need to make sure that we have wide

representation on the advisory council for the farm bill: environmentalists, farmers, consumers, and

government officials. Make sure everybody’s at the table.” And that happened, probably rare in creating

a law, but it was a little crazy.

2 Alar is the common name for the chemical daminozide used mostly on apples to regulate their growth. In 1989,

the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency responded to alarming reports on related cancer risks, especially for

children, and banned it.

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At the same time we’re helping to write the organic regs we’re having big companies, big chemical

companies coming in and saying, “We want to make sure that GMOs are included.” Municipalities that

are saying, “We want to make sure that we can add sewage sludge into it.” The third one was, “Let’s add

irradiation.” These are riders that they were adding and I guess that’s pretty typical of what’s happening

in Washington. But the organic community went, “Whoa! No. This is not what we want!” We were

really lucky because the then-Secretary of Agriculture, Dan Glickman, said, “I will not give the organic

community a law that they cannot live with.” He line-item vetoed those three items.

We went into implementation in 2001. What did that mean for the community? Two things. First of all

we got the USDA organic seal. Huge. That was that stamp of approval that went on all of our packaging

and that told every consumer across the land that this is a brand that you can know and trust and USDA

has put their seal on it.

The other thing that happened was the multistate operators said, “Great, we can now bring you in to all

divisions.” All of a sudden there’s more product in the market and it’s more available to consumers.

Boom! The next step is the conventional operators are saying, “I want a little piece of that action.” That

was the next growth spurt. You’ve got big conventional operations that now have a segment of organic

in their product line. Because these retailers are calling them and saying, “What are you doing in

organic?”

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The Curve Ball Coming At Her

We were at the pinnacle of our careers -- things going great, customers love us. I was really proud of

what we were doing. We’d come a long way and worked really hard. I harken back to those Saturday

mornings growing up on my family farm. That work ethic was so important. But sometimes life throws

you a curve ball. Tom and I lost something along the way, building a family business in spite of the

family. And unfortunately our family fell apart.

I wanted to stay in the organic community. I’d built my career on being Organic 911, the go-to-girl of

organic. So in 1998 I called the other best company besides Pavich, and that was Earthbound Farm. I

talked with Myra Goodman. “What do you think?”

She goes, “Oh my god, I’ve been trying to hire a ‘Tonya’ forever. Are you kidding me?”

I said, “No, I’m not kidding you.”

Then she asked, “But if I hire you, will you go back?”

I told her, “I don’t think I’m invited back. I think we’re done.”

“You get here immediately, and let’s talk.”

That was a huge ego boost for me after working so long in a family business that rarely had time to say

thank you. So I polished my resume for the first time in fourteen years and wrote up everything I’d

done. Typically, you don’t write a resume over one page. Mine was two and a half pages. I walked into

Myra and Drew’s office and handed them my resume, apologizing, “I know this is a little long, but

honestly I’ve done all this.” Myra flips through the pages with her highlighter. She goes, “Oh, this is

great. You could do this and that for me.” By the end of the meeting, I was offered a better job with a

better title and more money, a cooler car, and I was able to design this amazing position as the Vice

President of Organic Sales, their first female vice president of the company and one of the first in the

produce industry

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My first day on the job was at the Produce Marketing Association annual conference in New Orleans,

1998. I did volunteer work for the conference because it was a great opportunity to network with more

retailers, so I was in charge of programming for the 12,000 members of this convention. I got introduced

as Tonya Pavich, Vice President of Organic Sales for Natural Selection Foods, which was our parent

company. That day was amazing. I had lots of people hugging me, welcoming me to the new company,

proud of me for pulling myself up by my bootstraps. I spent a lot of time crying that day, too, because I

realized what a wonderful and unique family the entire organic industry truly is.

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Her Pitch and Passion

When I talked to consumers about organics, I’d paint a picture of this beautiful farmland that had been

mistreated. I used the story about digging into gray soil completely depleted of life, then talked about

what happens with organic agriculture, the nutrition that makes a healthy plant, which in turn makes this

healthy product for you and your family.

I’d say, “We can’t always control where we live or that we have to drive our cars, but we can control

what we put in our mouths. You have the power to vote with your dollars. Do I want to vote for

something unhealthy for my family?” I’d go back to talking about the huge commitment of driving two

hours to Mrs. Gooch in L.A. for organic food, but I knew I was making a better choice for my family.

“Fortunately for you now, we’ve done all the work. Organics are available in your local store. I hope

you’ll adopt an organic program because it will be healthier for your family and the planet.”

I have the easiest job in the industry as a marketer. The farmer has the tough job, making the crop. And

“sustainable” to these guys sometimes means making payroll on Friday. I got to romance the stone: sell

their beautiful, hard work, bring in the farmer through storytelling. If we’re lucky, we can even bring a

couple good looking wrangler wearing-farmers to a convention and introduce them to buyers. There’s

nothing better than that because farmers get to talk about their other child, their crops. A lot of them are

big talkers, too. They have great stories and solid reasons why they’ve gone organic. It’s hard work but

passion-driven. If you went to an MBA school and tried to promote the farming business model by

saying, “This is what I lay out financially on the line every year. This is what I do all year long, in 105

degrees or in the mud. This is how many hours I work, and this is what I get at the end of the year,”

they’d all say, “You’re crazy!”

“Yeah, we’re farmers.”

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Organic 911: The Planet’s Environmental Crisis

I talk about Organic 911 because I feel an urgency. I grew up in southern San Joaquin Valley. Air

pollution and air quality is the second worst in the nation after Los Angeles. One of the contributing

factors is the inversion layer that arrives every fall. This thick layer of clouds holds all the pollution

overhead. At this same time of year, the cotton crops are ready for harvest. The traditional method of

harvesting cotton in those days included the process of defoliating the cotton plants. The applied

herbicide not only meant the plant lost its leaves but also died, leaving only the cotton bolls remaining.

This makes for an efficient mechanical harvest of the cotton, saving time and money. But the side effect

of using the herbicide was evident to the community since many of us would get really sick and get

severe headaches. Consumer watchdog groups started monitoring these issues with the health

department and noted a spike in childhood diabetes during this same period of time. Now Kern County,

along with the rest of the San Joaquin Valley, employs a less toxic salt solution to defoliate cotton, thus

reducing those risks significantly. But time and again we read about the connections between chemical

use and depletion of soil, water, or air quality.

We now have a solution for consumers: a healthy, primarily organic diet, that’s non-GMO, non-sewage

sludge, and non-irradiated! It was a compelling story. So why would a buyer say “no” and throw me out

of the office? Now, I wouldn’t call myself radical, just someone selling something positive. I could look

at a buyer and say, “I’m selling health. Organic produce happens to be the vehicle. I’m selling really

good stuff. I’m the answer to your prayers.” One of the best things I ever did was cheerlead in high

school. Because, except for the pompoms missing, that’s what I was doing for the industry.

The Impact of Organics on Conventional Farming

The impact organic had on conventional farmers has been huge. If you’re losing market share on the

grocery shelf, you wonder what organic growers are doing that you might also be thinking about.

Farmers think about cost per acre. Are there soil amendments, and if so, what’s the cost? So they started

asking what organic growers were using that would help their soil and their crops and possibly even

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save money because, honestly, no farmer is happy about having to buy expensive chemicals for their

crops. If there’s an alternative, they want to hear about it.

I think it was a two-edged sword, as much a marketing opportunity as a new way of farming. A lot of

conventional farmers that have an organic segment are employing essentially old-fashioned farming

techniques, with less use of chemicals. It’s been a double benefit for our ag community. They’ve learned

a lot from us. The older generation of farmers say, “We did that before the war. We just were ‘natural’

because we didn’t have chemicals.” They saw the benefits: better soil, higher nutritional value, fewer

pest problems. There was also a benefit in the return on investment.

Initially it was difficult to make the conversion from conventional to organic because it’s a three-year

timeframe. One thing that helped farmers was growing baby lettuces because this type of crop grows

much faster, and there are fewer pest problems since it’s a shorter time to harvest. That enabled farmers

to get product into the market during the conversion period, though still as conventional. Some crops

bring a much higher return than others. Value added produce, like packaged salads, can command a

premium. We learned early on at Earthbound that pricing for our salads had to be within a 20%

difference between conventional and organic produce. Otherwise, the consumer wouldn’t pick it up.

Any higher and there was price sticker shock and resistance. Once we were priced right, consumers

would usually try it, like it and come back. Organic production does cost more, so we needed to pass

along this 20% premium to the consumer, and they have been willing to pay the difference.

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Green Gold: The Earthbound Farm Story

The story that I was told about Drew and Myra Goodman is that they started Earthbound Farm on two

and a half acres in Carmel Valley, California, in 1984. They were fresh out of college, one from UC

Santa Cruz, the other from Berkeley. They were housesitting a piece of property on Carmel Valley Road

with a raspberry patch out back. They decided to harvest the raspberries for beer money during the

summer until they went off to grad school. Guess what? These two unlikely farmers from New York fell

in love with the idea of working the land.

They were looking for tools, but the tool shed had chemicals in it. They said, “We don’t even know

what that stuff is.” So they picked up the Rodale book of organic gardening. “If we’re going to do this,

let’s do it in a way that we’re comfortable.” That began their organic experience. In addition to

raspberries, they started growing baby lettuce for a local chef just back from Europe where it was all the

rage. Drew realized, “This is perfect because it’s such a fast crop.”

At first, they’d harvest, wash, and spin the lettuce in their bathtub and living room, getting the product

ready for the chef. But that chef got fired and the new chef was not interested in baby lettuces, so

suddenly they didn’t have this major customer while all this lettuce was coming in. At that same time,

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they were eating salad every day. Myra said she’d sit down on Sunday with big zip-lock bags, and after

she washed the spring mix, she’d make bags and put them in the refrigerator, so when they got home

from work, all they had to do is pull a bag out, add some salad dressing and a little protein, and they’d

have a salad conveniently ready to go.

Soon she realized, “These bags are great!” She designed the first Earthbound Farm logo, printed copies

of it, and stapled it to the bags. “Drew, we need to feed our family. Go sell these.” He took a basket of

bags and started selling them at local markets. Then they thought, “Our friends in New York would love

this.” The company just grew from there, out of their backyard, living room, and bathtub.

So the first pre-washed, packaged salad greens were created by Drew and Myra Goodman, Earthbound.

Myra’s father was an inventor and held patents in the jewelry business for clasps and other things. He

was really brilliant and instrumental in developing automation for Earthbound Farm starting with the

salad washing and packing here in Carmel Valley. When they grew from two and a half acres to 200,

they realized they were no longer just gardening. They could now call themselves farmers. Then Costco

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came a’calling and loved the idea of selling one-pound bags of organic spring mix. At that point Drew

suggested, “I think we need to get even bigger.” He met with a local vegetable farmer from the Salinas

Valley, Stan Pura, and told him, “If you teach me how to scale up, I’ll teach you how to grow organic.”

That initiated a long term partnership and taking Earthbound to the next level. They jumped from 200

acres to about 5,000 acres within a couple of years and never looked back.

Yet it was truly organic growth, one customer at a time, with no master business plan, just the need and

desire to fill customer demands. I joined Earthbound in 1998, and at that time we were about $60

million in annual sales. We were in full mechanization, doing a million tons of product, and creating all

kinds of different blends, offering twelve or thirteen varieties of salad on a daily basis, plus other

commodities. There was a lot of automation, with optical eye sorting, bagging, weighing, and a state-of-

the-art food safety program. It was all an evolution of adding products, customer base, and growth.

In vegetable farming, it typically isn’t just one farmer growing, packing, and shipping large quantities

under a brand. A multitude of growers roll up under a brand, be it Dole brand, Tanimura & Antle, Foxy,

or Earthbound. At our peak we managed over 150 organic growers, ranging from a three-acre radicchio

farmer to Stan Pura with several thousand acres of agriculture. We learned that organic agriculture was

“scale neutral”: the same rules and principles apply to three acres as to 5,000.

Drew and Myra are very passionate about what they do. They’re smart and savvy business people and

they have great eye for attractive, not to mention delicious, products. Their customers love them, the

farmers that grew for us respected them, and consumers loved the story of these two improbable

farmers from New York. They have full belief in the organic community and produce. Their principles

and vision guided our mission and team, and led to the success we all enjoyed together.

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The Walmart Story: Getting the Impossible

We wanted the Earthbound brand to be affordable and available wherever consumers shopped. So who

was next? Walmart, the largest retailer in the world, and a most improbable candidate. How are we

going to get them into organics? I flew to Bentonville, Arkansas, with a few members of our sales team.

In those days it was really a small slice of Americana. Corporate headquarters were across the street

from their number one store where they tested new products and merchandising ideas.

We arrived the night before, and I’m wondering if they’re going to understand our story. So I go to their

corporate store for inspiration. I walk around and then decide to buy a magazine. Lo and behold, in the

magazine section I see the organic gardening magazine by Rodale. “Oh, this is a sign!” I tell myself. I

put it in my basket and start working the store. Next thing I see, Muir Glen, organic spaghetti sauce.

Yes! I find organic tofu, organic pasta, Kashi cereal. Keep going! In every grocery department, I find

bits of organic. Not a lot, but just enough to build a story.

We walk into the meeting the next day with my bag of treasures from the night before. I lay all these

products out on the table. But I don’t have any Earthbound samples showing. These produce buyers

walked in and looked at the table, saying, “Eww, look at that. I wouldn’t eat tofu!” “Yuck, what’s that?

It’s organic. Ha ha!” They’re making fun of me. Okay, here we go!

When they all sit down, I tell them, “One thing that’s important to know about organics is that produce

is the key gateway category for organic customers. If you have an organic customer shopping in your

store and finding other items, but not finding organic produce, you typically won’t get them to really

adopt an organic lifestyle. But if you have organics in produce, then they’ll look for other organic

products throughout the store. Unfortunately, you’ve done it backwards. All of this was purchased in

your number one store across the street from corporate headquarters.”

“What? That was in our store?”

“Yes! Every other department is ahead of you. You’re behind the times, and you’re supposed to be first.

Let us help you be that gateway category. Because this stuff was a little dusty on top.”

We went from not being on their list at all to Walmart hitting our top twenty customer list within six

months of their signing on, and top ten in a year. I think the highest Walmart listed was sixth. That is

lots of new customers buying Earthbound!

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Organic Becoming What It Had Once Opposed

The mission at Earthbound Farm was to bring the benefits of organic to as many people as possible and

serve as a catalyst for positive change. That means making the product available and affordable.

Contrast that to the early stages of organic when we were typically selling to a niche market of hippies at

natural foods stores or to wealthy people who could afford higher prices. Our goal was to broaden that

horizon. That meant getting it into Costco and Walmart. Revolutionary, right? Did that upset a few of

the original “O Pioneers”? Probably. Maybe the older organic community didn’t understand our

philosophy; but we were thinking of what was best for the larger community, making organics

affordable and available to all people, including a cab driver in New Orleans and a teacher on a fixed

income in New York.

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At the top of our game, the Earthbound brand was available in eight out of every ten supermarkets in the

United States in some way, shape or form. That’s a lot of work and a lot of traveling for our growing

sales team. And we were proud of that. Produce brands are hard to build because of “the velocity”

coming through your refrigerator. Most people can’t name many produce brands, maybe a big

conglomerate like Dole on your banana. But people do know and love Earthbound.

Earthbound Farm was rising and rising until we hit a crisis point on September 11, 2006, when we had

an outbreak of e-coli in our facility. It was spinach. Our spinach sales went to zero. We disked all the

fields. All brands of spinach got recalled in general, so the spinach industry suffered across the board,

both organic and conventional. Everything got taken off the market in every category – off plates in

restaurants, as well as out of retail. The crisis lasted for six weeks, which may seem short, but it felt like

an eternity. It took quite a while to build the business back up. We were all broken up about it, a little

shell shocked. We were a great company with good intentions, but we grow out in Mother Nature and

didn’t realize that wild pigs flying through the fields would have this devastating effect. It was a dark

time for the company, painful and expensive. For Drew and Myra, it was also so personal because the

Earthbound brand is their baby.

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In 2009 a group of private equity investors from Texas bought a third of the company. Years later they

eventually sold to White Wave, which is based in Denver. Now White Wave is in the process of selling

out to Danone. We wish them well. They obviously know the business. Drew and Myra are no longer

owners, but their story is still the anchor to the history of the brand, and the roots are important. As the

saying goes, “The shadow of the farmer is the best fertilizer.” In this company, there was nothing better

than the shadow of the founders being there every day. We were living their passion on a daily basis, for

a cause. When the investors came in, they were more numbers driven, which they should be. They

wanted a return on their investment. And when somebody else is in charge, they change the culture a bit.

So in 2010 I decided it was time for me to leave. I walked into Drew’s office and said, “My job is done.”

He goes, “Oh good, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I said, “No, no, my job here is done. I mean, we had company goals, and I had some personal goals of

my own. One of our goals was to make organics accessible for all consumers across the country. We did

it. Second, to develop different aspects of distribution. Now we’re in Walmart, Whole Foods, and

everywhere in between. So I’ll give you a new organizational chart for sales and trade marketing, and

I’ll promote three people in my department to fill my job because that’s what it takes. Now it’s time for

me to be the first person at Earthbound that can actually say they retired. Cause for celebration!”

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New Fields to Sow

Going back a bit, when I first started at Earthbound in 1998 I got a call from Rick Antle. Rick is

President and CEO of Tanimura & Antle, the largest grower, packer and shipper of fresh lettuces in

North America.

He said, “I need you to come work for me because we need to get into organics.”

I said, “Thank you, I’m so flattered, but I’m joining Earthbound soon and we have a lot of great things

going on there. Actually, you don’t want to compete with us. I’d like to introduce you to Drew and Myra

because I think you should be one of our growers.”

Rick then told me, “Well, I’m thinking about buying another organic company.”

I said, “No, no, no, hold off on that. You need to be one of our growers because you have prime

agricultural land in the Salinas Valley and your partner George is 80-something and he knows how to

grow naturally. I think this is a really good fit.”

So that following spring I introduced Drew and Myra to Rick. He ended up buying a third of the

company for Tanimura & Antle (T&A). By October of that same year, Stan Pura and his group now

owned a third, while Drew and Myra had a third. They started a board with two members from each

company, and it was all working out well. T&A went from not being on the radar with organics to

having over 5,000 acres, converting more of their own land and finding leased land or land that had been

fallowed, all kinds of different ways.

Always the professional, Rick, several months after his own divorce, asked Drew if he could start

courting me. I later laughed when I heard that news.

“You had to ask my boss if you could take me out?”

He said, “Well, I’m a partner and on the board. I wanted to make sure there wasn’t any conflict.”

Thank goodness Drew gave his blessing! We’ve been happily married now for fifteen years, and it’s

been a lot of fun. I can’t stay away from those farmers, darn it! Something about men of the earth.

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The Future of Organic

I’ve always thought that organic is a great marriage between modern technology and old fashioned

farming techniques. As technology continues to advance, we can implement some of it in organic

farming. The National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) and the Organic Material Review Institute

Lists (OMRI) are always looking to improve, include new materials or figure out what needs to be taken

out of the program. It’s a very, well, organic and fluid movement. At the base of it all is still the practice

of growing in harmony with nature, without using any synthetic or petroleum-based pesticides,

herbicides, or fertilizers.

I’ve been a guest lecturer in ag business marketing at Cal Poly for years now. When I first started, I saw

a lot of conventional farmers’ kids that had been in Future Farmers of America and thought organic was

bullshit. Every year, though, one of those kids comes to talk to me and says,

“Our family dairy wasn’t making it. We’ve converted to organic and we’re already seeing the results,

but I’m getting picked on here.”

I remind them, “Those kids aren’t helping you make payroll. You’re doing the right thing. You’re in a

segment that’s smart for you. Keep doing what you’re doing. You’re on the right path.”

The history of California agriculture is deeply rooted in multi-generational farming. Many of the first

farmers in the San Joaquin Valley were immigrants, be it Croatian, Greek, Italian, Armenian, Japanese.

They raised their families on farms. As in my case, typically the girls went off to college, got married,

and didn’t come back to the farm because the farm was going to the sons. Or they’d marry a farmer. The

sons would come back and carry on the tradition of the father, looking at ways to improve, modify, fix,

or develop a whole new scheme for that particular land.

Nowadays I find that not all of the sons and daughters can return to the farm. The first son often goes

back, but the second and third have to find other support jobs within the ag industry, like becoming a

fertilizer or truck salesman. Sometimes no one can afford to come back. A lot of these farms look for

alternatives and organic is one answer.

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Sometimes, too, the original landowners are no longer farming. They have tenants on their land. Lease

negotiations are becoming a big part of the business in the Salinas Valley, not the farming itself, a new

industry of land ownership. What happens to the soil depends on who owns or controls the lease. For

instance, you wouldn’t put a low cash crop in when it’s a high rent. You’d put a higher valued cash crop

on it, like strawberries.

But with strawberries, labor is the big issue, and so is housing. We’re proud to say that Tanimura &

Antle has taken a leading position in building farm worker housing in the Salinas Valley. It should have

been done a long time ago by a lot of other farmers. We’re taking a couple of hits on it in the

neighborhood; but at the end of the day we need labor and labor needs a place to live. This is a very

expensive county. Yet nobody has a comprehensive plan for affordable housing for their workforce. So

we’re taking a lead. In the Spring of 2016 we opened phase one of Spreckels Crossing which consist of

housing for up to 800 employees . Others need to do that, too, especially in any high labor demand

industry.

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The organic community is not done yet in terms of the percentage of total sales. If you look at baby leaf

lettuces, organic is 50% of the market of everything sold today in that category. We’re 20% of romaine,

20% in baby carrots. Spring mix baby leaf lettuces lead all produce categories. And there’s many other

commodities, like chocolate or coffee, which are more limited, so they have a smaller market share. But

it’s a multi-billion dollar industry. There’s still a long way to go.

We’re no longer a movement. We went from movement to industry once we had the national law. That’s

pretty incredible, and we have a lot to be proud of. The future of organics continues to look bright.