Carbon Negative Fruit Production: It's A Real Thing & It's Spectacular

Welcome back, everybody.

This is Omnitalk Retail.

I'm Anne Mazinga.

And I'm Chris Walton.

And we are coming to you live from the Symbiont Omnitalk booth here at Spartan Nash Food Solution Expo.

Standing between us, Chris and I have Lauren Foss, who is the VP of strategy for CMI Orchards.

Lauren, welcome to omnichalk.

Hey.

Thank you.

Excited to be here?

Yes.

How's the show been going so far?

It's been great.

You know, it's been great so far.

It's so fun to get out and spend time with our, our friends at Spartan and then also get to meet all of their independent retailers.

So it's my personal first time here.

So it's great to put faces to names and see who we're selling fruit to.

Excellent.

So, Lauren, I gotta imagine.

I know I am and I know probably our watchers are too.

What is CMI Orchards?

What is it?

What does it do?

And what's your role there?

So CMI Orchards is an apple, pear and cherry shipper in Washington state.

So we represent roughly 15% of the state's apples and 15% of, or really about 20% of both pears and cherries as well.

So we grow anywhere from basically the Oregon border all the way up to the Canadian border, all through central Washington there.

Do you have a favorite in each of those categories?

I do have a favorite.

Okay, well, let's.

I don't know if I could tell because then it might make some people a little bit, you know, little uneasy.

No one listens to this.

It's really funny.

Sugar Bee is my favorite apple.

I don't know.

Sugar Bee.

Sugar Bee, Yes.

I don't know if you've had that one.

I have not, but now I'm going.

To now look for it.

You should try it.

Yes.

That is a Washington originated apple.

So definitely take a look for that.

Okay.

Cherries, definitely.

Skyler Ray.

Skyler Ray, yes.

Wow.

So that's another one of our Internet influencer.

Yes, that one has a whole story in its own.

Wow.

Okay, I'll have to go take a look for that.

That is a.

It's a.

It's a yellow cherry, but very firm, very large, very sweet again.

And I came out of Washington, I.

May have had that potentially.

I just didn't know what it was called.

I'm guessing.

Yeah.

Okay.

And pears.

I'm gonna go throw another one at you.

You probably haven't heard of.

It's called a gem pear.

Gem pear.

So that's a newer one.

That just came out.

And you know pears are finicky, right?

Because.

Yes, of course they are.

They're kind of confusing as a.

As a consumer.

You gotta, you know, Bartlett's.

You gotta wait till they break color to eat Em.

Anjos are not gonna break color, but you just gotta feel them for the right texture.

Well, the gem kind of takes the confusion out of that.

It eats right off the tree.

You can eat it crispy and it's still sweet, or it can ripen up and be soft like an Andrew pear and still taste great.

Pear's a very underrated fruit, Ann, I think.

Oh, absolutely.

I think it's high on the underrated scale of fruits.

Absolutely.

On its own and as an ingredient in things, I feel like it's.

It is one of the best.

And now we're going to try this pear pearl.

We're trying to make pears sexy again.

I love it.

So you said this is your first time at the show.

Anything that's been noteworthy while you've been here or anything that, you know, you checked off your list while you were.

You were here the last couple days?

I think the most impressive piece that I've noticed is I got to go watch the auction to.

So I was watching them auction off both meat and various produce items, so that was pretty impressive to watch all of the independent retailers putting in orders on the spot, watching the numbers grow.

That's what was happening, how we heard it.

That's what was going on.

Oh, yeah.

There's all kinds of commotion going on.

So they're buying products at this conference.

Exactly.

So the more volume that the whole retailer base accumulates, the more they'll have tiered pricing.

So the more volume, the lower the price goes down for everybody.

So incentivizes everybody to buy more.

It's like the creps table in Vegas.

I love it.

Wow.

All right.

So since you're in the fruit industry, sustainability is always a big topic.

We hear that at every conference we go to.

And you've done a lot of work on the regenerative agriculture side of things.

So what do you think the opportunities are there in terms of what opportunities are there out there in sustainability and regenerative agriculture in particular?

Absolutely.

I think.

Well, opportunities with regenerative are.

They're endless.

But the difficult piece, I believe, with that is bringing it to retail.

So from what CMI is doing on our side, we position ourselves as kind of the sustainability leaders in the industry.

And how we're doing that is through we have a regenerative Cattle ranch.

That's part of our family.

That sounds funny coming from Apple, Pear and cherry shipper.

That's a whole nother story.

Yeah, we got.

It's actually a carbon negative cattle ranch.

Within that also, we have created another company called the Soil center, and that is creating different soil amendments that we're using with byproducts from both the orchard and the cattle ranch.

And those soil amendments go out back into the orchard.

Kind of completes a life cycle.

So with that, with cmi, we have a no burn commitment.

So naturally, when trees reach the end of their life cycle, natural process is to burn trees.

Right.

Get rid of them.

Well, when you burn trees, you're emitting all of that carbon that those trees have captured for the 30 years of your life.

You're putting right back up into the air.

So what we're doing, and this is just a piece of our regenerative processes, we're.

We're chipping those trees, creating the wood chips, and then those are getting processed through.

We have worm beds, which are the largest worm beds in the world.

Okay.

Eight acres of them.

So that's the wood chips are the medium in the worm beds.

And anyway, so the worms eat those wood chips and the byproduct is worm castings.

Worm poop.

Yeah.

Which is, put it bluntly.

Yes.

Pretty much the most valuable soil amendment in the world, really.

And then on the other side of that, too, we use biochar ovens.

So that's another way.

We take those wood chips, we'll burn them in the biochar, and that creates another extremely valuable soil amendment.

So in essence, what we're doing is we're taking those trees instead of burning or releasing carbon, we're putting back into the soil where it belongs.

And so with that, right now we found out through all of our regenerative processes, between the ranch as well as Soil center, we're sequestering enough carbon to take about 60,000 cars off the road each year.

Oh, my God.

So it's impressive.

So we are the first ones to say we grow carbon negative fruit.

Okay.

Which is fun thing to say because now you could say every apple that we're growing and what you're eating, we're helping make the world a better place.

Yeah.

So.

So it pays to be negative.

It does pay to be negative.

It's funny.

It's kind of a, you know, different way of saying it.

But I guess back to your question.

What are the opportunities?

Well, how do we take that and bring it to market?

Right.

So what we found Right now to.

The obvious way is with packaging.

Okay.

How do we package that?

How do we show it?

How do we.

How do we educate the consumer that by buying and eating these apples, you're making the world a better place?

That's an easy way.

A more difficult way is for companies such as Spartan to purchase carbon insets.

Okay.

Carbon inset is basically a carbon credit.

So we are generating carbon credits, but being carbon negative.

But an inset is investing within the product stream.

Okay.

If you will.

So they're investing in what they are selling, so it's called an inset, and those are more valuable.

Okay, great.

Wow, great overview, man.

Thanks, Lauren.

You talked about a lot there.

Do you feel, in your role as VP of strategy, do you feel like the things you just talked about being carbon negative, do you think that's what really sets you apart?

Or as a.

As a fruit producer, how do you differentiate yourselves outside of maybe that sustainability?

Absolutely.

That is most definitely, I would say, our biggest piece of what sets CMI apart.

And, you know, aside from that, we've always positioned ourselves as the brand leaders.

I just mentioned you before about the different apples and pears that we do and cherries that we market, specialty varieties.

So we've always had more branded or specialty apple, pear, and cherry varieties than any other shipper.

So we set ourselves apart that way.

And then also with organics as well.

So we're probably the largest organic shipper in the U.S. so, Lauren, I'm curious too.

We talk a lot about technology on this show across the industry and all the people that play into it.

In your job, heading up strategy, what role does technology particularly play on the strategic planning side of things for you?

Well, obviously we're on the marketing and sales side of things.

So technology, what we see is going to take place more on the warehousing side.

Right.

Which we are tied into, I guess, from what we are using.

We're constantly trying to look into data and research data from a sales perspective and then leverage that, use that with our retail partners to.

To be more efficient and to help drive sales.

So on the production side, we're seeing, you know, continual improvements with robotics, AI.

AI.

I mean, everybody's talking about AI now and.

And it's being used on the production side as well, I imagine.

Yeah.

Especially for, like, sorting machines.

Okay.

So when you're.

When you're packing and sorting cherries and apples, for example, that go through camera banks, well, the AI technology will learn from itself.

And so it's continually improving to detect internal defects and micro Defects that aren't visible to the normal eye.

So constantly improving the packs that we are putting out and sending into retail.

Wow.

Okay.

What else should we be looking forward to?

What other innovations will there be in apples, pears, and cherries in the course of the next couple of months and year?

Absolutely.

So, again, we talk about branded varieties and being the brand leaders.

We have a new apple that'll be coming out here probably in about two.

Probably.

Maybe not this season, but next season we'll see.

It's called yellow, and guess what color it is.

Just yellow.

It's Y, E, L, L, O.

It originated from Japan.

And what it is is, you know, there's a sea of red apples out there.

Right.

And so we.

Yeah, we're constantly getting, you know, questions from retailers.

How do we.

How do we put in a color break?

How do we do something different?

How do we make it pop?

Exactly.

So the yellow is an apple that is obviously yellow, but it's clean in appearance, doesn't have a lot of that rusty brown on there.

It's very sweet, it's very crunchy, and it stores well through the season.

So who would have thought that, like.

Grocers asking for pops of color would impact what kind of fruit we're eating and buying?

But I suppose that that's the business.

Hey, the end consumer is the one that tells us what we're gonna grow and how we make money.

So.

So do.

Are you accepting, like, do you have a suggestion box from our listeners who are like, I would like to have, I don't know, purple apple or purple pear?

Well, that's the.

That's the.

The running joke, as we always say.

We're.

We're looking for the blue apple.

You're looking for the blue apple because we're looking for something different.

You always ask people, how do you like them apples?

Right.

Yeah, that's.

That's probably it.

So.

All right, and on that note, let's take it home.

Oh, my gosh.

Thank you so much to Simbi and Smart and Ash again for having us here today.

Thanks to all of you for following along.

We still have a couple more interviews coming your way, so until then, be careful out there.