Sustainable Food Laboratory

Three growers receive cash awards to develop sustainable practices:
Left to right: Max Hasler (President of Fruticola Olmue), Ed Flanagan, Silas Smith Saint Sauveur, Jose Sotero Junemann Mardonez, Marco Antonio Bravo Bravo, Rober Jobin (Director QA Olmue)

Chillán, Chile, May 13 - It is my honor to attend this meeting and meet many of the growers who have supplied us with fruit for many years. I am sorry that I cannot speak to you in Spanish. Please bear with me as we translate.

I will first introduce my company. Jasper Wyman & Son, has been owned by the Wyman family since 1874. We are based in Maine, a state in the northeast, and we have a factory also on Prince Edward Island in Canada. We have 3000 hectares of wild blueberry fields and we have cranberry bogs, so we are farmers too. As marketers, we have our own brand of frozen fruits in the U.S. We sell a blueberry juice that is very successful and we supply many of the top customers in the U.S. such as SYSCO, Wal-Mart and Sara Lee. We are the number one supplier of blueberries to Japan and we have valuable customers in Europe.

Wyman’s is the #1 company in the U.S. for blueberries. During the harvest, we employ several hundred migrant workers. Immigration is a very hot political issue now and we are very strong supporters of the Hispanic workers rights. We are proud of our reputation as a migrant employer and we provide free insurance and housing as well as the best income of all migrant work. Last year my son worked as a blueberry raker on a crew with one other Anglo and 40 Mexicans. His Spanish is better than mine, especially the curse words. All of my sons have worked on Hispanic crews and their respect for them is deep. Our migrant camp has a soccer field. We have, at the end of the season, the Wyman’s Cup, a soccer match between Mexico and the U.S. So far the cup is won each year by Mexico but maybe this year we will win if we get a few more good players. So, our respect for our Hispanic workers is deep and it is earned by good, hard working people.

When I came to Chile nine years ago, I was looking for a supply relationship. I did not want to move around from one supplier to another because our best customers do not do that. They buy from Wyman’s. Our success in Chile, from that first day until today, is based on putting our faith, our needs and our expectations into one supplier and being faithful in return. That supplier for us is Fruticola Olmue. Of course, as you know, in agriculture things do not always go perfectly and it is during those times when the value of a good partner is most important.

I am here today to support the concept of “sustainability.” I am no different from many of you. We have to live in the present, get the work done, pay the bills, but for our children’s sake we must also protect the future. How do I….how do we do this when each of our roles is so small. If we do our part, we can inspire others to do theirs and real progress can be measured.

Wyman’s is not a teacher of “sustainability” because we are still a student, but we can help encourage Chilean farmers to be on the front end of this important movement. What American farms know, we know because of our mistakes. Much knowledge comes that way. Mistakes can be prevented if we share information. “Sustainability” means that we will do nothing today that diminishes our ability to do the same thing in the future. And it is not just about how we farm, but also about how we live in our communities. Wyman’s as a buyer has a responsibility to this community.

Sustainability today does not mean much to the global consumer. But we believe in 3-4 years consumers will judge products – food, cosmetics, textiles and automobiles – for their contribution to sustainability as much as for price, color and convenience. The suppliers who have nothing to offer will lose the order. So this is also about how we keep our marketing position.

We began this year a sustainable practices program through Olmue as a test. We want to invest in your interest in learning the sustainable practices that can make your contribution real. Thus, I am here to present the first three cash awards to the three farms that helped us to get started. We intend to pay these farms to continue the program for three years and we intend to sign up more farms for next year and the year after that and the year after that. Wyman’s is committing $150,000 to improve the income and sustainable practices of Chilean raspberry farmers.

Once again, Wyman’s couldn’t do this without a committed partner and I would like to end by saying that we are very grateful that you bring your fruit to Fruticola Olmue and that they do such a fine job meeting our specifications. Together I think we can provide a steady present and a better future for our children.