CALIFORNIA MEMBER PROFILE
Jeff Huckaby CEO/President Grimmway Farms Bakersfield, California
Member Since 1986
It’s All About the Carrots
By Tim Linden G rimmway Farms began as a sweet corn growing operation in Orange County in the 1960s, morphed into the largest carrot grower in the world in the 1990s in Kern County, and is now also the largest organic grower of vegetables in the United States. All of this points to a diversified company with a wide portfolio of crops and services. That is true but longtime employee and Chief Executive Officer Jeff Huckaby said “it is still all about the carrots.” He added: “Carrots are massive for us. They are still a big presence. We do not mind being known as a carrot company.” And he explained that it’s not just a hard-to-shake reputation, it’s a fact. The success of the two founders, brothers Rod and Bob Grimm—both of whom died at a relatively young age—is well known and well chronicled. They started in Orange County in the 1960s with sweet corn acreage, added a farm stand early on and then fortuitously added carrots as a rotation crop for their sweet corn. By the 1980s, they had moved to Bakersfield and were well on their way to being carrot entrepreneurs. They perfected the production of baby carrots and helped launch a revolution in that category. Throughout the ‘90s, the company grew into the carrot powerhouse that it is today. Of the 70,000 acres of carrots under cultivation in the United States, Huckaby says production from about 40,000 of them are marketed by Grimmway Farms. It was in the 1990s that the company started to grow organic carrots, which the current CEO Huckaby admits was not wildly successful. “We did okay,” he says. The shifting from corn to carrots was obviously a pivotal moment in the firm’s evolution. Another such moment occurred in 2001 when Grimmway Farms purchased Cal-Organic Vegetable in nearby Lamont. “That was a big shift for us,” Huckaby said. He explained that ground used to grow organic carrots one
year, must be planted with rotational crops in years two and three, before returning to carrots in year four. With the purchase of Cal-Organics, Huckaby said Bob Grimm made the commitment to devote the company’s best land to the organic sector. They couldn’t use leased land as the crop rotation made it impossible to preserve the integrity of the organic certification without controlling every crop on that ground, every year. Huckaby, who was in charge of Grimmway’s organic carrot production, became general manager of Cal-Organic and the leader of the firm’s march into the organic world. Initially, the
Cal-Organic’s purchase gave Grimmway 30 vegetable crops to rotate with its organic carrot acreage. Huckaby said after a couple of years and crop rotations it became clear that the soil was being improved and so was the output. He said the organic carrots being produced were of higher quality than before and yields were much better.
10 Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com JANUARY | FEBRUARY 2018
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