the California agriculture industry on the Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) and the California Freight Advisory Committee. As a delegate on the FMC, Schult works with some of the largest shipping and railway companies to protect American agriculture from future impacts. Schult sits alongside representatives from large corporations like Amazon and Walmart, granting Blue Diamond visibility on a national level. Since the COVID-19 pandemic brought about supply chain issues, industry leaders have become supply chain experts who provided knowledge and insight for the U.S. government. Schult often represents the almond industry and almond growers saying, “As a supply chain executive, it’s no longer about influencing your own company; you need to be active in the broader market community. Politicians need experts to provide context and background to deliver laws and legislative changes.” A recent result of Schult’s work with the FMC is the removal of legal limitations that severely limited the flow of goods through several major U.S. ports. With help from the Almond Alliance and various industry partners, Schult and other FMC delegates removed certain restrictions on shipping container trailer chassis that had severely limited shipping efficiency. While the scope of his work ranges from warehouse floors to executive boardrooms to Congressional committees, Schult always has an ear open to almond growers’ needs and issues to keep an eye on. Schult encourages growers to pay attention to two particular issues in the news: violence in the Red Sea and the drought in the Panama Canal. Although the two events are on opposite sides of the planet, both can seriously impact ocean shipping
routes, critical resources that give Blue Diamond Growers access to international markets. As Schult puts it, when shipping times get longer, fewer boxes of almonds are sent on the ships. When Schult looks back on his career, he sees both success and failure, “There is no perfect path. Your greatest lessons will be learned from your greatest failures.” Indeed, Schult says that his greatest failures and “misses” have been his greatest opportunities to learn and adjust, meaning that the next time those challenges came around, he knew what was needed to succeed. As he put it, just as this past year was a harvest with incredible challenges, the cooperative is setting itself up to overcome those challenges when they come again in the future. When Schult began his career with Blue Diamond Growers , he looked forward to an opportunity to coach and teach at the warehouse floor level while also making high-level strategic and logistical decisions. “I wake up and live my dream, working with farmers and growers and ranchers in the orchards. Very few people in the CPG industry can say they can touch from the floor to the store.”
Jake Sonke, Corporate Communications Intern, Blue Diamond Growers
19
MARCH–APRIL 2024
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