Many in this industry often find themselves customizing the map for our future in ways that both support and lead the vision of others. Rainier Fruit Company is one of those illustrious cartographers tracking the blueprint ahead while simultaneously mapping the lines as they go—creating intersections where the grower, the retailer, and the consumer can align and express their values through food, thought leadership, and environmental impact.
On this map ahead lies many a landmark to be observed and sought after—one of them most splendidly hailed as Earth Day. If you were to ask Rainier to rebrand an international celebration like Earth Day, my thought is the team would simply galvanize behind its frequency. For Rainier, Earth Day is every day—and the trailblazing apple, pear, cherry, and blueberry grower exemplifies its work in the vision and execution it infuses in each action, from the seed to the plate and the strategic heart work of its people.
“Our industry’s responsibility as caretakers of the land and food producers for the world is so much more expansive than one day can express,” President Mark Zirkle shares with me as the sun rises across the vast Rainier operation. “While everyone plays a part in making our society more sustainable, at Rainier we recognize that, as stewards of the land, we play an outsized role in the effort to make our food chain more biodiverse, resource-efficient, and resilient. These efforts were once seen as ‘extra’ or even gimmicky, but our experience with sustainable practices has been anything but.”
This continual desire to improve is the foundational driver of practices such as Rainier’s Bee Better Certified® habitat plantings, in partnership with the Xerces Society and its in-house soil composting operation. These programs are just a small handful of examples that illuminate Rainier’s Earth-Day-every-day philosophy.
“Thanks to the passionate efforts of many individuals here at Rainier, we are confident when we say our products exceed in both quality and sustainability,” Mark reflects, allowing for a pause between us as the conversation sinks in. “These initiatives positively impact not just the land, they positively impact yields, long-term viability, and quality. This can be found in the spirit of our fruit and our people.”
“While everyone plays a part in making our society more sustainable, at Rainier we recognize that, as stewards of the land, we play an outsized role in the effort to make our food chain more biodiverse, resource-efficient, and resilient.”
Mark Zirkle, President, Rainier Fruit Company
Earth Day falls on April 22nd every year, and is just one benchmark in an ever-evolving strategic vision of change and environmental resilience that Rainier leans into in order to bring its sustainability and regenerative agriculture philosophy to life for this vertically integrated company.
While Rainier is hyper-conscious of the fact that the state of our environment is the result of human impact, the company also relishes in the idea that a human component can also be what effects change and drives the charge ahead. Like any person, place, or thing—it can be used as a tool or a weapon. At Rainier, its team of dedicated colleagues see themselves as tools for creating and recreating the path ahead—recalibrating a clock that has ticked against us for so long.
Like a team, they are parts of a whole driven individually toward synchronicity and achieving a single initiative: Protect our Earth.
“One of the ways we contribute to an industry-wide sustainability effort is through our personal integrated pest management (IPM) program; specifically our Xerces pollinator plantings. IPM and pollinator habitat plantings contribute positively to the environment and to product quality,” Teah Smith, Entomologist, shares with me as she maps out one of the many focal points for Rainier’s sustainability initiatives. “My mission as an entomologist is to approach our pest management problems with an effective but environmentally sensitive approach. This process relies on a combination of common-sense practices by the most economic means.”
This “what is good for the environment is good for business” approach is what continues to set Rainier apart from competitors.
“Some of the things we have been doing to improve the sustainability and reduce the impact on the environment includes planting pollinator—and natural enemy—habitats with the assistance of the Xerces Society,” Teah expresses. “This effort creates a safe place for pollinators and natural enemies, increases abundance and diversity of each by providing a beneficial floral habitat that blooms all season, and helps with pollination and pest reduction in neighboring blocks.”
So, what does this impact look like in real-time? To start, the result is a reduction in pesticide sprays achieved by evaluating the weekly pest-to-natural enemy ratios in the field to determine if natural enemy populations can manage the pest populations. With better pest management on an organic level, Rainier does not have to spray.
To take that one step further, Rainier seeks to conserve natural enemies by tracking the efficacy of control tactics and their impact on natural, non-target pests, enemies, and pollinators.
“The goal is to release natural enemies to control pest populations in blocks where the native predator’s presence is not high enough. Knowing insect biology and phenology allows us to discover when higher levels of pests can be tolerated and is one way we look to address this issue,” Teah reveals. “We also implement non-invasive tactics to manage the number-one pest, Codling moth (CM). We are using the Codling Moth Sterile Insect Technique along with pheromones in the field to reduce CM damage and pressure while being able to reduce the number of sprays as well.”
Teah continues by relaying that using sap analysis also provides insight into the tree nutrient uptake and tree health status.
“This allows us to be proactive in giving trees what they need to be healthy and to monitor and prescribe the right nutrients to help with pest and disease prevention to reduce other spray inputs,” she says.
These efforts—and more—help differentiate Rainier’s fruit and elevate its customers’ own sustainability goals.
“Sustainability refers to the ability to maintain or support a process over time,” Teah notes. “We have taken sustainability one step further by implementing regenerative agriculture. It is time we work on reversing the degeneration. Rainier does all of this while paying employees a fair wage and managing to stay competitive in the market.”
The overall goal of this program is to obtain balance within the orchard system so there is no need for chemical inputs while also increasing fruit quality and yields, to feed the people of the world with high-quality, sustainable fruit—a big vision with even larger gains, allowing Rainier to see down the road in new and innovative ways.
“It is time we work on reversing the degeneration. Rainer does all of this while paying employees a fair wage and managing to stay competitive in the market.”
Teah Smith, Entomologist, Rainier Fruit Company
So, let’s recreate the map ahead. One way to do this is by asking: How can the soil become a space that goes beyond the concept of sustainability?
This is a question Aran Urlacher, Ranch Manager, asks often, and it drives all that he does—beginning even before the seed takes root.
“We need to find ways to make the Earth more viable if we want nutritious and healthy produce to grow. The soil itself has to become more tenable in order to do this,” Aran tells me, spreading out an even more complicated but promising roadmap before me. “Rainier is taking a holistic approach to growing. This includes a deep investment in soil biodiversity with our humus project and regenerative ag practices.”
If the soil is truly where nutrition begins, then this practice of cultivating the Earth makes even more sense as a starting point for impacting every inch of life on this planet—from the ground that sustains our footprint to the bodies that sustain our human life.
“Having a symbiotic relationship between the microbiome in the soil and the trees is essential. Think of the microbiome as a community of bacteria, microorganisms, nematodes, fungi, and more—all interacting in a give-and-take that replenishes and nourishes as the plant consumes. The premise of such a practice is to get the soil biology to a place where the plant’s defenses are working optimally,” Aran says. “When a plant has access to what it needs, it starts creating compounds called plant secondary metabolites. These compounds are only created in adequate amounts when a plant has all the nutrients it requires—this also affects the flavor in the fruit. Insects can’t metabolize plant secondary metabolites, so they naturally tend to stay away—this is a huge advantage of taking care of something that already takes care of us.”
I love this interconnectedness that thrives at Rainier, making humus and compost key ways in which sustainability becomes more precise. It evolves from maintaining an environment into regenerating it.
“Humus is the gold standard of compost, and we have figured out how to make it. Rainier is using our own waste from unsold apples, grape skins and stems from our winemaking operations, and chipped-up old trees that no longer produce fruit on 20 acres of land to make our own humus. This closed-loop system turns our waste into gold for our soil. It can take hundreds of years to create humus in nature, but we’ve developed a very regimented approach to creating our own batches in 12 weeks. A lot goes into the process, but what comes out is second to none,” Aran details.
If you have ever wondered how to create gold, Rainier has found it. Maybe not the malleable mineral you are used to holding, but just as valuable.
“Energy reduction cannot be overlooked or overemphasized. We are constantly reinvesting in our energy and water use reduction efforts and future goals,” Marvin Record, Chief Operating Officer, insists as he digs into another way that Rainier is celebrating Earth Day every day. “In today’s environment, consumers have many choices in the produce department and retailers have the same. What we put into the fruit matters economically and from a values standpoint for all involved. From farming organically for decades now, we have learned it’s possible to have good yields of great eating fruit with less but well-chosen inputs. With attention to detail throughout our packaging and warehousing operations, we have been successful in holding down some of our expenses in our current inflationary environment which allows us to keep our eye on the goal and our investments in sustainability.”
A goal that resonates with the consumer palate, wallet, and decision-making process.
Personally, Marvin tells me, he struggles with setting a sustainable goal—keeping the status quo is not good enough for someone like him or a company like Rainier.
“Like I was taught as a young boy in scouting, our goal needs to be to ‘leave it better than we found it!’ Here in Eastern Washington, our desert climate has its gifts and its challenges. On our farms, we’re constantly working at building our organic matter in the soil, and we have our own composting operation as Aran spoke to earlier,” Marvin continues. “Twenty years ago, long before sustainability was all the buzz, we installed a first-of-its-kind water treatment system for all of the wastewater from our packaging operations. Our system aerates and polishes the water to a trout-stream quality. From there, it flows downstream into a natural wetland that has now doubled in size since we started adding to it.”
This wetland in the middle of Eastern Washington’s desert climate is an oasis for countless wildlife species, Marvin adds. Observing this project has led Rainier to research what other types of efficiencies and benefits can be found. The company now has large solar panels on its packaging facility, countless lighting upgrades, and frequency drives on pumps and refrigeration.
“All of this lessens our electricity needs from the grid. I could go on and on, but it is safe to say that sustainability is not just window dressing at Rainier. It is deeply embedded in our culture,” Marvin emphasizes.
When you farm thousands of acres, pack millions of boxes of fresh fruit, and deliver them to customers with such a high standard—you cannot help but live and breathe such a vision on a day-to-day level.
“None of that would be possible without the hard work of our dedicated staff. Within our operations, there are countless examples of three generations working in different parts of the business. We are a family business, and while not all of us have the same last name, this is our company,” Marvin says, returning us to the beginning of our conversation and how people can be essential advocates for the land instead of just its opponent. “By far, the majority of innovation within our organization comes from the people doing the daily tasks. Our job as managers is to empower others and create a working environment that allows innovation to rise to the top. This is where we impact both the culture of the company and the health of the land.”
At Rainier, the team has a long-term approach to everything they do: We must take care of our soils and the environment with each action we take. This choice is evident in the responsibility Rainier takes in the packaging it chooses to ship its fruit, its drive to make its purchases local when possible, and how the company treats its employees fairly, as family and friends.
“This business culture has been handed down to all of us at Rainier. We take the responsibility of providing the healthiest and most flavorful fruit available to our customers and consumers with the utmost gravity,” Marvin concludes as we reflect on the day’s conversations. “You can trust us with your consumers’ health and the health of our planet. We can accomplish this by celebrating Earth Day every day.”
In other words, take a tip from Rainier Fruit Company, and leave Earth better than you found it. While you look for your own unique ways of accomplishing such a feat, look to a team that leads by example as we chart the sustainable map ahead. 
