The Delicate Nature of Berries

At the grocery store I reach for the organic raspberries, but the price difference between organic and non-organic — over 20% — gives me pause, even though the difference is less than $2. The general understanding is that organic foods are healthier and can even help address the climate crisis, but what are the challenges? 

The person with answers is Garland Reiter, chairman of Reiter Affiliated Companies, the world’s largest berry producer of both organic and non-organic and sold by Driscoll’s. Anyone who’s eaten berries — blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries — has likely eaten Driscoll’s, which controls one-third share of the global berry market.

Still family-owned while so many others have sold or merged with conglomerates, Reiter Affiliated Companies has transitioned to growing organic berries for about 20% of the business to meet demand, despite the challenges. Garland explains how and why his company has committed resources to organic production.

Garland lives in Santa Barbara, where a California bungalow was converted into his office. It features original hardwood floors and is set amid an unusual array of trees and plants on the property designed, not surprisingly, by plant magician Eric Nagelman.

A Delicious Family History

Garland and the family dog Basil settled in front of his office fireplace, and Garland talked about his family’s beginnings in the berry business in 1904. Ed Reiter (Garland’s grandfather) and his brother-in-law, Dick Driscoll, became berry growers farming on the San Francisco Bay Peninsula and, by the turn of the century, had migrated south into Watsonville on Monterey Bay, where the company still headquarters — the perfect temperate berry-growing climate, with cool ocean fog and sandy soil.  

In the summer of 1900, Ed’s sister, Louise, came back from visiting a friend on a ranch in Shasta County, where she had discovered some especially sweet, large, and consistent strawberries. That delighted her brother, so he planted them, naming the variety Sweetbriar, after the ranch.

Later, they renamed them Banner berries for the yellow banner that encased the berries on the crates during shipping. With some shrewd marketing, they became a hit. “Banner: A Wonder. The talk of the Pacific,” read the promotion. 

The World War II period was also a major turning point in the berry business. “As UC Berkeley turned its focus in 1942 to research for the war effort, plant scientists were let go, but they were eager to still keep up their research to develop new plant varieties that could withstand challenges of shipping and viral infection.” Ned Driscoll, Dick’s son, partnered up with some brilliant scientists, enabling them to broaden their distribution significantly and hold patents to new and more stable varieties. 

Research and development were also a priority for the Reiters. In the decades after the war, Garland’s father focused on improving raspberries and his older brother Miles focused on strawberries with the aim to enhance varieties for sweetness and durability.  

Full responsibility for the business came prematurely and tragically to Garland and Miles in 1977, when their parents died in a plane crash on their way to the Canary Islands. The young men, still in their 20s, rose to the occasion, succeeding far beyond what their parents could have imagined. Today, the company grows Driscoll’s berries in seven countries in collaboration with almost a hundred partners and independent farmers. With Driscoll’s berries sold around the world in 48 countries, it’s one of America’s top 10 grocery store brands. 

Organic Growth

Growing high-quality berries is a challenge requiring intensive labor, water, and constant concern about disease, invasive pests, and climate change.  

Organic production is even more demanding, with crop rotation, pest control without chemical pesticides, and rigorous federal and state certifications, but Garland is direct about the company’s motivation. “It’s good business. People, young mothers, want to trust what their kids are eating, so there’s a demand, and that makes a market for us. Consumers are willing to pay a little more. It’s that simple.” The greater the consumer demand for organic berries, the more Reiter is incentivized to expand its organic production. But there are side benefits of organic growing, suggests Garland, with new growing methods and soil enrichment that the company now uses for non-organic farming as well. 

In addition to organic growing, regenerative farming — no-till farming, rotational grazing, mixed crop rotation, cover cropping, the application of compost and manure instead of chemicals — pulls carbon back into the earth, sequestering it. The potential for mitigating climate change by how our food is grown is powerful; some climate experts say that if farms around the world used regenerative and organic practices, we could draw down enough carbon from the atmosphere to significantly slow global warming. The heavy use of fertilizers with traditional industrial farming also results in heavy carbon emissions.

Yet most farmers still resist, pointing to the expense of new equipment, lower yields with crop rotation, and the three years before the newly engineered fields are productive. One family farm owner from Nebraska told me, “If I grow organic, the pesticides just blow over onto my land from my neighbors. What’s the point?” 

Reiter’s farming laboratory is constantly working on new solutions to fight disease without using pesticides and chemicals. By cultivating worms and releasing a genus of fungus called Trichoderma into the soil, Garland told me: “The soil comes alive, like the healthy probiotics you have in your stomach … a cocktail of good bacteria. … You create a powerful living soil that reduces disease. The microbiomes break down the nitrogen and convert to nutrients right away.”  

“In the end,” he says, “the organic berries taste better and are healthier. They use less water and less chemicals, and berries give the grocers the highest return in their produce department.” 

Garland and his brother Miles could coast on their success, but seem determined to continually do better to delight consumers. A team of scientists at Driscoll’s called the “Joy Makers” are dedicated to conjuring new berry sweetness and texture. One researcher even has the lucky job of tasting berries all day for comparative flavor and perfection, like a master sommelier.

To successfully grow berries year-round, Driscoll’s contracts growers around the world that can produce during different times of year. The Baja region of Mexico, with its drier climate, sandy soil, and ocean air now provides most of their organic strawberry supply. But the news from the Reiter-affiliated farms in North Africa isn’t as bright: Droughts and severe weather events from climate change are contributing significantly to the already challenging task of farming berries.

Garland’s office features a refrigerator stocked full of berries, and as I left, he offered me a dozen boxes of raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, and blackberries as a parting gift. They were, indeed, delicious. Several studies show that blueberries and blackberries are high in antioxidants and anticarcinogenic.

Buying organic isn’t just about superior taste, but also about knowing that consumers have an important role to play in incentivizing major food growers to try organic and regenerative farming. We all have a role to play together — as the more consumer demand grows for organics, the more organic production in farming can take place.

How to Keep Raspberries Fresh, According to Driscoll’s

1.     Try to keep your raspberries as dry as possible. 

2.     Refrigerate raspberries in their original package between 32° and 34°F. 

3.     Rinse raspberries gently with cool water just before you're ready to eat them. 

Have some fresh strawberries? Check out this recipe for Quinoa With Arugula Microgreens, Strawberries, and Feta. 

Is Organic Food Really Better? Check out what our advice columnist, Dear Dot, says.