How Gerber Partners with Farmers to Grow and Harvest Quality Fruit & Vegetables
For more than 95 years, feeding babies has been the heart of our Gerber business. As the leading baby food maker in the U.S., we’re proud to provide parents with high-quality, nutritious and safe baby food.
We put quality at the forefront of everything we do, and that commitment starts on the farm. We grow and source the ingredients for our baby food with care, working hand-in-hand with our trusted fruit & vegetable growers—many of whom have been growing with Gerber for generations. Together, we are helping advance regenerative agriculture practices that can improve soil health, enhance biodiversity, and reduce the impacts of climate change, all while helping minimize the presence of heavy metals.
As a member of Gerber’s agriculture team, I’m based in Michigan, where many of our fruit and veggies are grown, and I know first-hand the hard work our agriculture experts and farmers put in to grow quality fruits and vegetables. Here are some of the ways we’re working to grow food that’s safe and delicious for babies, while also protecting the land where our ingredients grow:
Advancing Regenerative Agriculture Practices
We partner with our growers to encourage the adoption of regenerative agriculture practices—like planting cover crops, reducing tillage, and using fewer pesticides. These practices not only improve soil health, but they can also enhance biodiversity and help combat the impacts of climate change.
Our team offers both technical and financial assistance to empower our growers to adopt certain practices, and we continuously measure and assess the impact of farmers who are adopting regenerative agriculture. We’ve seen some positive outcomes so far—many of our growers are already advanced in utilizing these methods, meaning they are well-established in regenerative agriculture and implement multiple practices on their fields. For example, our fruit growers are adopting natural control strategies in their orchards that help reduce pesticide use and preserve beneficial insects, and they leave tree trimmings in their orchards to help increase carbon and nutrients in the soil.
Protecting Soil Health & Mitigating Contaminants
We also know that several aspects of soil health can play a role in minimizing the availability of heavy metals to crops as they grow. That’s why we partner with our growers to prioritize growing locations for optimal climate and soil conditions, and rotate crops according to the best available science. We also perform regular soil sampling for heavy metals and approve, prior to harvest, all fields growing root crops for us because they are more likely to absorb heavy metals from the soil—this process ensures that what is harvested meets our strict standards.
And that’s not all—Gerber is all about continuous learning and finding new solutions. We invest in research and team up with leading institutes, universities and experts to actively explore new farming practices, technologies and insights on soil health and nutrient uptake. These efforts inform our work and help our network of growers thrive.
At Gerber, we pursue uncompromising quality, continuously working to deliver on our mission of helping generations of families grow with love. Our agriculture expertise and strong relationships with the farmers who grow our ingredients are key to achieving this. I’m excited to build on the years of progress we’ve made, so we can continue protecting the land where our ingredients grow and ensure we can deliver quality baby food for generations to come.
