I Tracked Down the Company Ruining Fruit

0:00 [Alec] Is produce getting worse? This tastes like an unripe tomato. [Alec] That's what I've been hearing, especially about berries. But I'll be honest, I'm skeptical. So I wanted to put this idea to the test. [Taste tester] I could crush 55 of these. No problem. This one tastes more grassy. This one tastes like... [Alec] And is grassy a good thing or a bad thing? I started out with a simple question: If fruits and vegetables are getting worse now, who's to blame and what can we do about it? It led me to the heart of a berry empire, whose produce you probably encounter in most grocery stores, and a disturbing conversation with an insider who worked for them. They had gotten rid of their own internal audit systems from the food safety department. [Alec] And to all kinds of ways

0:45 that agricultural giants are stacking the deck against American farmers — We've gotten away from a place where innovative, intelligent, hardworking farmers can make a living. — while remaking the food system in ways that lands on all of our plates. The story starts with this guy: a blueberry farmer, but you won't find his blueberries in any supermarket, and I wanted to know why. Okay, well, I'm gonna I'm going to start out being positive. Name’s Hugh Kent, and I'm a blueberry farmer in central Florida. And you're on King Grove, which is an old farm. [Alec] Hugh’s farm, it's a little different. I feel like I'm in a state park on a hiking trail.

1:31 [Hugh] Yeah. That's the benefit of the work we do. [Alec] That work? It's stewarding a diverse ecosystem that extends from this pine forest to the soil his berries grow in. [Hugh] We feed the microbes, the microbes feed the plant, and the plant feeds us. [Alec] The berries I sampled, they were Hugh’s personal frozen stash, so not ideal conditions, but still better than any blueberry I've ever had. Is love the secret ingredient? [Hugh] No, soil made that. Nature made that. I had very little to do with it. This is so good. While you can't get these blueberries in any grocery store, there is one brand that you probably can't escape: Driscoll's. And those two facts are more related than you might think. In 1989, Driscoll's had a vision:

2:17 to grow the major four berries year-round, so you can get your fill of blueberries in fall and strawberries in the winter. But the dream didn't really come into fruition until 1994 with the North American Free Trade Agreement. Driscoll's pioneered berry growing in Mexico for export at scale. [Alec] That's Matt Kinsella-Walsh, a former chef and now berry trade expert. Prior to NAFTA, the Mexican berry market was relatively niche. Now, 32 years later, Mexico is expected to produce 1.2 million metric tons of berries. Peru and Chile also have become centers of massive berry production, supplementing Driscoll's California farms. Their international gambit paid off, with a berry empire spanning every hemisphere. Only one brand outsells Driscoll's in American grocery stores:

3:05 Coca-Cola. American berry consumption has skyrocketed, and so have prices. And yet, many farmers are getting left out. [Hugh] We are without a doubt seeing a collapse of small and medium scale family farms in our region. [Alec] Why? To figure that out, we have to dig into a lesser-known fact about Driscoll's. [Austin Frerick] I love telling people that they sell one in three berries, but they don't grow a single berry. [Alec] That's Austin Frerick, author of the book Barons. [Matt] Driscoll’s is primarily a genetics company, They have a large amount of valuable plant genomes that they rent out. [Alec] It's a model that lets Driscoll’s keep costs low by avoiding some of the major challenges of berry production altogether. Driscoll's makes money, regardless if the berry is harvested.

3:54 They've already licensed the genetic material and in many cases, sold the packaging. The Driscoll’s business model is to dump their risk onto contract growers and then reap the profits. That dynamic of dumping risk onto farmers has also been especially profitable in the pork and chicken industry. It's even big in lettuce. Many have compared this contract model to sharecropping. [Matt] Both models essentially create a captive market. Driscoll’s exerts control over their contracted farmers essentially in what they're required to buy and who they're required to sell to. This system of control fuels their year-round schedule and gives them leverage when selling to supermarkets across the country. [Austin] The family behind Driscoll's realized Walmart just wants one company to do four berries year-round for 4,000 stores.

4:40 They saw that before anyone else, so they dominated that market. Supermarket chains no longer need to source blueberries in June from one company and another in August. They now have Driscoll’s. Big companies prefer to deal with other big companies. It cuts down on costs and logistics, but leaves farmers like Hugh out to dry. He witnessed the shift firsthand. After selling 30,000 pounds of blueberries to a national grocery chain one year, Hugh tried to go direct. [Hugh] When we finally got ahold of them, they said, “Well, can you provide us with a full domestic season of blueberries?” And we said, “No,” because that's not what a farmer does. That would mean I would have to farm in Florida, then Georgia, then North Carolina, then New Jersey, Michigan, and the Pacific Northwest.

5:26 That's not what a farmer does. That's what a broker does, a middleman does. [Alec] It's what Driscoll's does. It's contributed to their massive market share in America, at least 30% in berries broadly in 2017. 60% in organic strawberries. It's not just risk Driscoll’s gets to offload. I think the reduction of liability is baked into their business model. [Alec] This is David Harada, who is now suing the company as a whistleblower. His accusations paint a picture of a company laser-focused on avoiding responsibility. David alleges, in late 2022, that he first noticed that their contracted farmers were applying pesticides above the legal limits. So he told his bosses, thinking he'd done a good job.

6:11 [David] And then I received a random phone call from my director of agronomy, and basically asking “Do we have plausible deniability regarding this issue?” I was completely dumbfounded, mostly because the first words that I expected out of the director's mouth was, “How do we fix this?” Not, “How do we hide this?” David also alleges an internal audit found approximately half of Driscoll’s shipments to Canada, between 2022 and 2024, contained at least one tray that exceeded legal pesticide residue limits — $100 million worth of shipments. During his three-year tenure, he also dealt with consumer complaints about berries tasting like chemicals or nail polish. It's hard to live with myself knowing that that's still ongoing. I've seen enough bad things that have happened on Driscoll's berries

6:56 to know that I probably won't touch one for the rest of my life. A Driscoll’s spokesperson denied David's allegations and said they maintain robust food safety programs, including independent laboratory testing and third-party audits. “No food safety regulator has determined that Driscoll’s berries are unsafe,” they wrote. But allegation after allegation seemed to follow a formula: how far can we push plausible deniability? We have a food safety manual that we give out to all of the different growers. And the goal at the time of our food safety vice-president was: how are we going to reduce food safety liability? Well, to start, let's reduce the food safety manual as much as we can. Their belief is that: now that we've told you this, if you don't follow this, we’re directly responsible

7:41 because you're not following our direction. Those safety directions might advise farmers on how to not contaminate water or poison their own workers. [Farm worker] There’s been times where we're exposed to long periods of pesticides, and the people have gotten sick from it. I myself have also been exposed to it. That's Jay, not his real name. He's worked at Driscoll's-contracted farms in California. And while I couldn't independently verify his own pesticide claims, his allegations echo systemic problems in the industry, including Driscoll's-contracted farms. Did they give you any safety training? No, they don't really tell you nothing. Sometimes they have the notes, you know, like, little signs. But, top of that, they don't really say nothing about it. In 2016, a pesticide safety committee was a key

8:28 demand of workers at Sakuma Farms, a Driscoll’s supplier. And more recently, activists in Watsonville, California, have alleged farm workers and school children alike are being exposed to these dangerous pesticides. Several organizers and workers I spoke to alleged insufficient breaks, wage theft, and general low pay. [Farm worker] With Driscoll's, their fruit is more expensive. It reaches almost $7 per box, but the pay for us continues to be very low. These aren't just injustices. They're now economic facts independent farmers have to compete with, especially in countries like Mexico, where wages are even lower and labor and environmental protections are fewer. The USMCA, the successor trade deal to NAFTA, allows companies like Driscoll's to grow berries there and import them to the US duty-free.

9:15 Under the USDA organic regulations, we’re supposed to improve the quality of our water, our soil, woodlands, wetlands, and wildlife. [Alec] By contrast, berry growers in Baja California are building desalination plants because so much of the scarce water has been drained from the area. [Matt] Large berry growers like Driscoll's use a massive amount of water while their workers often don't have running water in their homes. American-based multinationals, I would like to think that, yeah, they are treating those societies well. I don't think that's what's happening. And I think if they were required to do that, their prices would go up, and we would, we would be able to get a fairer price ourselves. But, again, for all these injustices, Driscoll's technically didn't do any of it. A contractor did.

10:01 In water-scarce Baja California, one of the largest contractors is BerryMex, owned by the Reiter family. That family also controls another notable company: Driscoll's. Driscoll's has found a way to not be the face of the agriculture violations that happen on the ground, whether that's, you know, the unsafe working conditions, exposure to pesticides, the very low wages. [Alec] That's Erica Diaz Cervantes, whose organization CAUSE has been fighting for living wages for California farm workers. She's trying to build connections with farm worker unions in Baja California, who have been fighting for better conditions and wages for over a decade. There is a legal mechanism that could help, baked into the USMCA. It lets unions in one country fight union-busting in another.

10:48 But agriculture is exempted. As for Driscoll's, a spokesperson responded to criticisms of their labor and environmental standards by reiterating publicly available information about their support for worker welfare and agricultural sustainability. They also added that the company audits farms to make sure they comply with pesticide regulations. The good news is Hugh has found a way to survive. [Hugh] We can't operate in the wholesale system anymore. It's way too consolidated. [Alec] He's moved to selling his berries directly to consumers. [Hugh] We ship them throughout the country. So, if you can grow something with quality, people will seek you out for sure. [Alec] He's also getting attention from at least one celebrity chef. Where I really had a breakthrough was at Hugh’s place. But it's getting harder to find Hughs in the farming world.

11:36 When these farms go away, they don't come back. [Alec] Even trying to buy strawberries for my test, every single store had two prominent options: Driscoll's and Driscoll's Organic. Competitors were few and far between. We've gotten away from a place where innovative, intelligent, hardworking farmers can make a living, and we're moving towards this model, which relies on questionable treatment of a large number of people and riches for a few people at the top. [Alec] Matt has been advocating for a tax on a particular part of our food and agricultural system. Tax the parts of the supply chain that have profited so greatly from deregulation and consolidation, and return that money to the communities that actually grow our food. The tax would affect companies like Walmart, as well as companies

12:25 like, Bayer, Dow DuPont, but also companies like Driscoll's. More broadly, people like Austin want us to rethink how we invest in agriculture. [Austin] We can choose to subsidize good produce in this country. We have chosen not to. The system isn't just robbing our communities, but our taste buds, Hugh thinks. Consolidation by definition means that there's little or no competition, and we've seen the quality of our food eroding all over the place. Cheers. [Alec] Hugh’s blueberries were out of season, so I couldn't put them to the test. So instead, I performed a very unscientific study with strawberries, where I fed them to Tristan Kwong, a chef and self-professed fruit sommelier, Edward Dupree, a produce worker and union organizer,

13:13 and my coworkers. I tried to make it blind. They all look like Driscoll’s berries, if I'm being honest with you. So A is an Oishii berry. [Tristan] It's a little more watery. Feels like it was grown kind of fast. So it just kind of tastes like fruit — this is so weird to say — fruit flesh? These tasted decent. They're just, I don't know, that was like a texture thing. I’m sorry. It's, like, water and, like, cellulose? Whatever makes up a cell. The texture’s not great. I like the texture. [Alec] Tristan ranked a local New York farm as his favorite. His number two? Driscoll's Organic. I devised slightly different tests for each iteration. Some people ranked Driscoll's highly. Others didn't. Some preferred small farmers market berries. Others didn't.

13:58 So there's not a universal consensus on anything but flavorless came up several times. [Edward] They just don't taste like anything. Now, does all produce tastes like garbage now? It seems like a reasonable person could disagree. As for me, I've been hate eating my way through a pint of grocery store blueberries. They're so bad. They're not even Driscoll's. But my palate has been ruined. Thanks Hugh.