Now more than ever, it is critical that companies understand and manage their
business, supply outlook and promotional activity to withstand both natural and
economic disasters. Our conversation with Soren Bjorn, President of
Driscoll’s of the Americas, provided insight into how a top fresh produce
brand is fostering business resiliency and how that translates into creating
shared value within its business and local communities.
Driscoll’s, a privately owned company, is a global leader for fresh
strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and blackberries. With more than 100
years of farming heritage,
Driscoll’s unique business model is rooted in local communities that grow fresh
berries. The business begins with “Joy
Makers,” who develop proprietary
varieties to deliver on great flavor. Driscoll’s provides the cultivated plants
to its network of 700 independent farmers to grow the best berries in the world.
Once harvested, the company then markets, sells and distributes the berries —
returning 85 percent of the revenue to the farmers. The business model runs on
mutual dependence, trust and shared success.
Here, Bjorn discusses some of the ways the company has integrated responsible
labor practices and community engagement into its business model.
Driscoll’s localized business model has been the foundation of its growth. How has it challenged you to grow responsibly in the communities in which you live and operate?
Soren Bjorn: Our commitment to community has been in our DNA since
Driscoll’s was founded in the 1950s. Driscoll’s is not involved in the fruit
farming itself; the growers we work with are all independent farmers. This type
of business model means that you don’t have control over all aspects of the
operation, but it challenges you to be diligent of your entire supply chain,
nonetheless. From the beginning we had to be clear about our expectations
whether for food safety, food quality; or, more recently, labor
standards.
The complexity of our business has changed over the years as we have entered new
markets, production regions and communities; these changes have challenged us to
look at the business more holistically and reevaluate the expectations of our
independent growers.
[At one point], we had unrest in a community in Baja, Mexico. It did not
originate in something we were doing or not doing. The underlying issue was that
there is not enough water in the community — and one season, it became more
acute. It turned out that the people who were organizing in the community for
water security got advice from organizers in the US, who told them that if you
really want change to happen you need to target the big brands, because they
have a reputation that they will try to protect. We became the focus as the only
big brand in the area.
So, we did a significant outreach to our industry association, which led to a
much bigger collaboration between us and the two organizations that represent
the fresh produce industry here in the Americas — the Produce Marketing
Association (PMA) and United Fresh. We began collaborating to
implement changes in our global community. The collaboration has been going on
now for several years, and has seen successes both at the local level and in
motivating other companies to make significant changes. The Ethical Charter on
Responsible Labor
Practices
was adopted in January 2018.
Given the complexity of your supply chain, how do you ensure that the standards are met at each stage of the process?
SB: You have to take a pragmatic approach. Our philosophy is about improving
how things work. We have different types of growers — some bigger growers have
their own HR, legal, and health and safety departments. Implementation with
those growers is a lot easier. It’s a bigger negotiation to change something
with them; but once agreed, it is much easier to implement because they have
their own support structure. The biggest challenge is with the small community
growers who don’t have that support in place. But we are very committed to small
growers being part of our vibrant agricultural community. It can’t just be all
corporate farms.
To help those growers, it means that sometimes we have to be willing to live
with something on an interim basis that is not ideal. Early on, in developing
countries, it wasn’t unusual for the payments of very small growers to be in
cash. With no proper payroll, you can’t verify that things are being done as
they should. For example, you can’t be sure that wages are not being withheld or
distributed equally.
But our philosophy is that you can’t just say that’s not acceptable and get rid
of them. We might find a third party that would help them; or in some instances,
we might even go in and do the work for the grower on a temporary basis. Of
course, there are certain things for which we have no tolerance such as child
labor or slave labor.
You have to accept the reality you are dealing with, particularly in developing
countries. It’s not appropriate to set the same expectations you would have in
Europe or the US, so it is much more of a journey. We use third parties
to do a social compliance audit, which is separate from the food safety audit.
Based on our own risk assessment, we decide our priorities, which determines
where they go to audit and how often the audits take place. But it is not about
enforcement — it is about how we can help the growers improve their operations
and create a thriving
workforce.
How do you ensure that the work has a positive impact on the community, in addition to providing work?
SB: One of the things that changed after our experience in Baja was that we
started drawing the circle around our business much wider, thinking beyond our
four walls of operation. It’s easy to think about your role or impact in the
community as solely providing jobs and contributing to the economy. However, we
have come to realize that we must think about how our business impacts the
entire local ecosystem. If you come into the community, you will be using their
resources like water or housing. As a business, you have a responsibility for
working out how you are going to alleviate the problem that you are creating.
Some you can fix directly; others are much bigger, and you have to engage with
the community. No business wants to get involved in running the infrastructure
like water or electricity or housing, although sometimes it is necessary. But
you can still contribute to the solution.
We do a needs assessment and usually engage somebody on the outside to interview
stakeholders in the community to see what the greatest needs are. One of the
things we ended up doing in Baja was help to get 800 water tanks that opened
automatically when there was water pressure. In this community, the water only
came on at certain times; if the worker was out in the field, there was no one
to fill up the tank. Now the tanks automatically fill up even if there is no one
at home.
The problems are different in each community. Here in California, housing is
probably top of the list. Although we can’t solve the state’s housing crisis, we
are working on a project right now to help build some low-income housing in our
local communities. In other places, it might be childcare or healthcare.
You can’t sit in a corporate office and try to project what you think the
community needs. You have to engage with the community and let them tell you
what they need, and you can then choose what you can support from that list.
How challenging has it been to ensure continued supplies of healthy fruit while keeping workers safe during the pandemic?
SB: There was a lot of disruption to the US
market
in the first six weeks and the impacts were felt throughout our entire
enterprise — the business, our independent growers, and our retail partners. In
a way we were fortunate to have somewhat of head start, thanks to our operations
in China. When we realized that we would have to deal with this here in the
Americas, we prioritized regular contact with our colleagues in China to find
out how they were managing the situation. We wanted to know what issues were
emerging as critical, and how we might be able to prepare for them.
One of the biggest challenges was housing. Many farmworkers don’t live in
conditions where they can go home and isolate if they get sick. As an industry,
we worked with county officials to get isolation facilities. This might, for
example, be a hotel we had secured to be used for this purpose — which the
industry paid for, collectively.
We have now passed the peak of the harvest season in the US, and as devastating
as this pandemic has been, our One
Family has for the most part
remained healthy and safe. One thing we have learned from this is that there are
vulnerabilities in our food
system
that we need to address. In the US, the single greatest vulnerability is that
hundreds of thousands of essential farm workers are not documented. That creates
a difficult situation when you are trying to encourage everyone to get
healthcare and to get checked. The farmworker
community
should be fully integrated into the overall community, and the reason they are
not is because of their immigration status. The pandemic has shone a light on
that problem, and we have a collective obligation to try to work out how we can
fix it sooner rather than later.
Get the latest insights, trends, and innovations to help position yourself at the forefront of sustainable business leadership—delivered straight to your inbox.
Sustainable Brands Staff
Published Sep 16, 2020 8am EDT / 5am PDT / 1pm BST / 2pm CEST