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In 1984, a couple of city kids from Manhattan with no farming experience landed on a 2½-acre raspberry farm in the verdant Carmel Valley of California – by way of UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz. They had intended just to take a year’s back-to-the-land break before going off to grad school. But the land and farming – growing fresh, organic food for people – seduced them, as they learned to farm organically. The story is well-known and often-told; you probably recognize it as the early days of Earthbound Farm and its co-founders, Drew and Myra Goodman.
Earthbound Farm Co-Founders Myra and Drew Goodman
In the beginning, perhaps their perseverance came from their lack of experience: they didn’t know that it was crazy to farm with no experience, that it was crazy to farm organically and expect to make a business out of it, that it really all shouldn’t work. But it did. Good timing. High quality products. Hard work. Smarts. They had all the building blocks for success. And all those building blocks were laid on a foundation of passion and principled commitment to expanding organic, driven by the firm belief that organic is healthier for the land, the water, the ecosystem and people.
Thirty-four years ago, there was a lot to overcome. Organic was far from the market-driving dynamo that it is today; it was more of a sacrifice. People who bought organic food typically paid a higher price but settled for less fresh, sometimes lower quality produce to support a philosophy, a farming system that aligned with their beliefs – the classic apple with the worm hole in it.
In so many ways, they succeeded because they were never content to accept well-worn orthodoxies. They believed people would pay a little more and choose organic the more they learned. They believed people would embrace prewashed mesclun in a bag. They believed that organic farming methods could scale with integrity. They believed that there was something to learn from dedicated conventional farmers who also saw a future in organic farming. They believed that one day organic produce would be available in every supermarket in the country. And they proceeded in accordance with their beliefs, despite being told they were naïve. But that’s often the case for pioneers.
The Goodmans weren’t the first to grow spring mix, but they were the first to see its potential for democratization. And they were joined by some visionary Salinas Valley farmers. Earthbound Farm’s successful selling of organic into mainstream retail was the match the lit the fuse of organic growth in the Salinas Valley produce industry. As retailers sought to meet their shoppers’ growing demand for organic produce, Earthbound Farm’s success had an influence on farming in the Salad Bowl of the World: the number of growers and organic acres continues to expand to meet consistently growing demand.
It’s been more than four years since Earthbound Farm was purchased by WhiteWave Foods (which was purchased by Danone a year ago) and the Goodmans let go of their remaining ownership in the company they nurtured up from a back-to-the-land dream and a tiny little raspberry farm to become a major player in the salad category and a catalyst for the growth and scale of the organic produce industry.
Today, life is different for the Goodmans. They still care deeply about the health of people and the planet. And they still live on the original farm, which is still certified organic. Myra is working on a book about her father (who’s inventive ingenuity helped the Goodmans build their first salad wash and pack lines) and Drew is a one man show managing the original family farm, and he runs a family investment fund. We spoke with them recently.
In 1984, when organic produce was the stuff of health food stores and farmers’ markets, starting an organic farm with the idea of making organic produce more accessible was a steep hill to climb, especially for a young couple that didn’t have large scale farming experience. But alongside the challenges, there were some pleasant surprises even early on.
Drew and Myra have great appreciation for the spirit of innovation of the conventional growers who joined Earthbound Farm in 1995. “Stan [Pura] and John [Romans] were very determined and committed and it has been gratifying to see them carrying organic soil management practices even into their conventional farms,” said Drew. “They don’t get enough credit for the work they did to solve the big problems that helped organic grow from small scale to supermarket scale.”
“It’s satisfying when I talk to some of the old-time organic farmers and hear how impressed they are by the commitment of many of the larger scale organic growers,” said Drew. “When we look to learn from each other rather than settle into polarized positions we can make real progress.”
“The first time Stan came to visit us on the farm,” remembered Myra, “he couldn’t believe that we were farming this way.” They all got to see how far apart their worlds were. “We had no clue what he was doing, and he had no clue what we were doing at first.”
“Stan looked at our farming — which was amazingly amateur-like and sloppy relative to his extreme diligence and meticulousness on his farm — and there was not one comment,” remembers Drew. “He was a complete gentleman about any comments that he might have had on what we might be doing wrong.” Myra added, “He didn't let his criticisms or concerns get in the way of moving forward with working with us.
“In the competitive environment of the Salinas Valley 30-plus years ago, where most of the growers grew up together in farming families and each is trying to improve on what others are doing, sometimes the more seemingly far-flung ideas —like growing spring mix or the close spacing of the lines on a bed as we were doing —are just not brought into the equation,” observed Drew. “But Stan is relentlessly curious, and I think that leads to a lot of innovation.”
“It was that mindset of applying the techniques that were known in large-scale farming — which we didn't know given our background — to different crops, different types of things,” said Drew. “Our hope of scaling organic into something that was available in the supermarket could only be realized with the marrying of those techniques to vastly increase the quality and affordability, and then using the same systems for transportation, distribution, cooling, as existed for conventional.”
“Stan and his partners were unafraid to go down the path of scaling up organic and partnering with us at Earthbound,” said Drew. “And we were not typical Salinas Valley ag people. So I think not only did they have this relentless pursuit of perfecting their craft, but there was an open-mindedness in how they operated their business, which I think is notable.”
Drew and Myra remember that the next Salinas Valley ag giant who became a partner in Earthbound also embodied the pursuit of innovation: Rick Antle and Tanimura & Antle came into the fold in 1999.
(Left to right) Gary Tanimura, Stan Pura, Myra Goodman, Drew Goodman, George Tanimura and Rick Antle (1999)
“Rick also had this eye for innovation and a complete lack of fear of failure, which really enabled him to try things, some of which stuck,” said Drew. “And he didn’t seem to be afraid of going back to the families that he represented on the things that didn't stick. I think that the investments in Earthbound, especially at the time that they invested, kind of represented a little bit of a reach because it was 1999 and Earthbound was small and still finding its sea legs.”
Drew added, “There were a lot of reasons why the industry wanted to be dismissive of organic. Rick's joining forces kind of put the weight of Tanimura & Antle’s reputation behind Earthbound Farm—and by extension, organic—which made the buying community take both Earthbound and organic a little more seriously.”
“At Rick’s celebration of life, someone reflected on Rick’s focus on the rising tide raising all boats as it related to the iceberg lettuce business,” recalled Drew. “Rick really did believe that. And while there is certainly conflict and change is hard and organic has seen a lot of change over the years, I think that with the entrance of the larger growers (Cal-Organic/Grimmway, Bolthouse, Driscoll's, Earthbound), organics have moved from being seen as the worst quality to being perceived as very high-quality. Today, I don’t think people really remember how whatever organic produce you could find was terribly merchandised in a dark corner of the store, and farmers markets were few and far between.
Drew attributes that to the “awkward embrace of organic” by the conventional growers who had perfected cultural practices for growing the Salinas Valley crops. Their embrace of organic farming techniques and organic as a component of their businesses has expanded quality and accessibility in important ways. “I think it wasn’t unusual when you look at their history of coming up with new crops and ways to ship them and pack them,” said Drew. “And I think the amount of rising tide has been tremendous.”
“When Tanimura & Antle bought in, I had those hippie tie-dye T-shirts made with ‘Organic: The Biggest Revolution Since the '60s’ on them,” remembered Myra. And in the perfect theme recognizing this true inflection point in organic produce, Myra had the idea of putting Rick Antle in one of those t-shirts for the Earthbound Farm trade ad. “The headline was ‘We're changing the meaning of conventional,’” said Myra. “He agreed to do that and that we put those full-page ads in every trade magazine and newspaper. Rick had the nerve to be the king of conventional ag and then be our ad for organic. And that’s something that I will never forget.”
