Our Whole Trade® Guarantee ensures fair prices are paid for products, better wages and working conditions, and sound environmental practices. These Whole Trade bell peppers also generate a 1% donation of retail sale value to the Whole Planet Foundation.

These peppers come from Divemex, growers we have worked with for a few years now. We were pleased when Fair Trade USA came in as a certifier and helped the company meet their rigorous standards, which now qualifies the peppers for our Whole Trade Guarantee.

Recently, a group from our produce team visited the Divemex 175-acre greenhouse farm. They toured the facilities, learned about their production techniques and met some of the 600 people who are employed at the farm. Here’s what Matt Rogers of Whole Foods Market Produce had to say about the trip:

It was still a couple of weeks before harvest when we visited, but we saw some nice green peppers maturing on the plants. From a quality perspective, we like to see peppers with good blocky shape, full seed pack, even cavities around the seeds, and nice thick walls. Color comes on about three weeks after a pepper is mature and green. In the next five months, this farm will produce more than 10 million pounds of colored bell peppers!

With the Fair Trade certification, Whole Foods Market and our customers receive independent verification that working conditions and environmental practices on the farm meet high standards. Fair Trade also requires that a part of our purchase price be passed through to a fund controlled directly by the workers on the farm. The workers vote on how to invest the money to benefit their communities.

We met with the workers committee and they explained that the workforce had already voted to support three distinct education support programs for different interest groups:

• One for children of workers to support basic needs associated with attending primary school (uniforms, transportation, etc.)
• Another for workers themselves who want to continue their secondary education while they work
• And a separate one for workers seeking professional training of some sort to advance their careers.

Many of the workers at this farm are migrants from other areas of Mexico and special attention has been paid to ensure the families of these workers will also have access to the programs. We’re always excited to be able to support growers like Divemex who take the quality of their product and the wellness of their workforce seriously.

We hope you’ll pick up these peppers in our stores and help make this new program a success. Tell us what you think. When you buy something like bell peppers, do you consider the impact your purchase makes?

Take a look behind the scenes at Whole Foods Market’s Gluten Free Bakehouse.  In 1996, Lee Tobin was diagnosed with celiac disease, and, as a baker in our Chapel Hill, North Carolina, store, this presented a real challenge.  But Lee took it on! He began experimenting with gluten free baking on his own time, developing recipes that rivaled conventional goods in flavor and texture.  Over the years, Lee’s gluten free breads and baked goods flew off the shelves faster and faster.  By October 2004, he was proud to fire up the gluten free ovens in the new, completely separate, dedicated facility: the Whole Foods Market Gluten Free Bakehouse.

Last year around this time I posted a short piece titled “It’s Summer in February” about peak of summer fruit from Chile. I wrote that some of our favorite deals on the produce team are those where we know the grower and have seen the fruit in production across multiple seasons.

Time flies, it’s a whole year later and it’s summer in February once again. It may be winter in the States, but we’ll soon be enjoying a taste of summer from a grower that we love.

As soon as we get through the holidays each year, members of the produce team start asking each other: “When will we see Juan Miguel’s nectarines? Are we on track for February 10?” As February gets closer Juan Miguel’s “nectos” become a regular topic, and by the time the fruit arrives in stores we’re beyond ready for the taste of sunshine.

Happily, we’re featuring nectarines from Juan Miguel Errazuriz again this year. Juan Miguel is a second generation grower, whose family has been involved in farming for the past 250 years. Errazuriz traveled the world for three years to research horticultural practices and technology before deciding on a type of fertigation system that supplies water and nutrients directly to the trees’ roots. Now, Errazuriz is one of only a few growers in Chile who uses drip irrigation to control the trees’ root systems and maximize flavor.

In addition to nectarines, Chile’s fertile Rancagua region produces grapes, peaches and plums. The Rancagua region is much like California’s central Valley in reverse, set between the cool and rainy south and the hot, dry northern regions of Chile. Well below the equator in the Southern Hemisphere, Chile is in production at precisely the same time that the US is out – meaning there’s little competition between the two. Rather, the two countries’ seasons complement one another and many stonefruit growers work in partnership across both hemispheres.

In addition to Juan Miguel’s nectarines, we’re excited this year about old fashioned cling peaches from Mauricio Cuevas. Cuevas grows and harvests modern varieties of old fashioned yellow peaches and harvests them at the height of the season. He’s focused on a growing philosophy based on “flavor and sensation” that prioritizes quality at every step, from cultivation to packing to transportation and storage. Expect to see these lightly colored aromatic peaches in stores later this month and into March.

We’re proud to feature these summer fruits from the South this winter. At the same time we’re eagerly looking forward to summer here in the North when we’ll have many more stonefruit offerings from more growers that we love.

As you may know, we’ve had a series of cold fronts passing through the state of Florida in recent days. We’ve received a lot of questions about how this weather affects supplies of products traditionally produced in Florida during the winter months. Here’s a quick recap:

Strawberry supplies will be tight throughout the industry for the next six to eight weeks. Florida is basically wiped out at the same time that Mexico is cool and rainy and California is cool with rain in the forecast. Not a great recipe for strawberries, but not that unusual for the season either! There will be limited strawberries in the marketplace – certainly less than we would wish for!

Happily, blueberry supplies (from Chile) are very good this year and are an excellent substitution for strawberries. Additionally we’re excited be offering organic mangoes in multiple markets for the next several weeks. Our featured mangoes are certified organic Kent mangoes from the Piura region of Northern Peru. About half of our Kents are certified by the Rainforest Alliance, while another portion is certified Fair Trade. The Kent mango is known for its sweet rich flavor, and smooth, buttery texture and is an excellent substitute for berries. Don’t let the Kent’s green skin fool you – it’s ready to eat when slightly soft to the touch! It’s not a strawberry, but it makes a great addition to any fruit salad or smoothie!

Florida tomatoes were also very hard hit in the most recent freeze this past weekend. It will be approximately 8 weeks before we see East Coast supplies of field grown tomatoes recover. In the meantime we’ll be offering alternatives from the hothouse.

East coast bunching greens were impacted by the freeze as well, but we expect these items to recover more quickly than tomatoes or strawberries. We don’t expect our customers to feel any discernable impact and we’ll fill in from Western regions until the East Coast is back into production.

Lastly, since most of our Florida citrus suppliers are very close to the coast, they were somewhat insulated from the coldest temperatures and we don’t expect a dramatic affect on citrus supplies at Whole Foods Market.

Our fingers are crossed that we’re through the worst of the winter weather – the 10 day forecast looks pretty good! – and that our growers can get back to doing what they do best ASAP.

In this episode, I traveled to Monroe, WI to visit the Klondike Cheese Company, one of the few feta producers in the United States that meets our Quality Standards. The Buholzer family has grown the company tremendously since they started making cheese in 1925. Our partnership with this family owned, third generation operation began back in 2002. Even though they are now a large company, they only work with 85 locally family-owned dairy farms and because the milk is fresh, the cheese is deliciously fresh too. My personal favorites include the Mediterranean feta and the feta with black pepper.

In this final installment of Dispatches from the Field, Steve visits the Pro Mujer

headquarters in Salta, Argentina and operations in Tucuman, Argentina, where Whole Foods Market sources blueberries.  His interviews with Pro Mujer clients, Pinky and Graciela, unveil the power of access to credit in their communities, where these women have been able to build support networks and find access to affordable healthcare services.

On this leg of his trip through South America, Steve explores Paraguay and opportunities for building a microcredit program in the country where Whole Foods Market sources its organic sugar cane.  Steve experiences the hospitality of folks who remember Phillip Sansone, Executive Director of the Whole Planet Foundation, from his days as a Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay over 30 years ago.

In this installment of Dispatches from the Field, Steve and Philip brave oxygen deprivation and “Death Road” (renowned as the most dangerous road in the world) to reach folks in the rural communities of Bolivia with Pro Mujer to provide financial services coupled with health and education.

Steve Wanta and Phillip Sansone of the Whole Planet Foundation meet with women entrepreneurs of Peru who have benefited from microloans from the Whole Planet Foundation. In less than one year, working with Pro Mujer, The Whole Planet Foundation has provided loans to over 1200 woman. This capital has allowed these entrepreneurs to grow their businesses, provide for their families and plan for the future in ways that were previously unavailable.

Exser Thompson ranch – Chile

Because Chile is in the Southern Hemisphere, their fruit ripens during our winter making them a natural partner allowing us to offer high quality fruit year round. Chances are if you have been enjoying grapes, peaches, plums, nectarines, apricots and blueberries this winter, they were grown in Chile. The growers and their farming practices in Chile are very sophisticated and we work hard to seek out top quality producers and feature products that are truly unique and different.

Chuck and Chris inspecting newly harvested red seedless grapes

The opportunity to visit our growers in person is invaluable to building a long lasting partnership. We are able to understand the challenges our growers face in regards to their specific climates and growing regions and the growers appreciate meeting us and are extremely proud to have their fruit featured in Whole Foods Market. Fernando DeBasa from Aldunate, a producer of our Rainforest Alliance certified grapes lives and works in the Coltauco Valley under the shadow of the Poqui Mountains. Fernanado’s grapes are special because of the people who grow them; some have been working with grapes for 40 years, passing their traditions and growing secrets along to successive generations. Guerino Gioia, an Italian immigrant, came to Chile via Argentina in 1930 and is said to have developed the first Chilean table grape destined for export; the Gioia family are proud producers of our Rainforest Alliance certified grapes. Andres Ureta of Exser is focused on efficient and earth-friendly farming practices for water and soil preservation and are devoted to farming Rainforest Alliance certified grapes in some of Chile’s most challenging conditions- mountain slopes and valleys.

Thompson Seedless on the vine

The varieties of grapes for our Rainforest Alliance certified program were chosen for big fruit size and sweet flavor. Our green grapes are primarily a Thompson seedless variety – an elongated grape that is plump and juicy. Thompson Seedless grapes have a yellow cast or straw color with a touch of amber when they are at their peak flavor.

Red grapes

Our red seedless grapes are a combination of Flame and Queen Red varieties which are both round grapes that are hard and crunchy and very sweet. Red grapes are best when fully colored and always picked ripe as they do not ripen further once off the vine.

Black seedless grapes

The black seedless grapes are primarily the Autumn Royal variety which is also very crisp and sweet, oval shaped and the purple-black skin has a whitish cast or bloom while the interior is an attractive, translucent yellow-green. We will be featuring these delicious Rainforest Alliance certified table grapes through March.

Chuck under the canopy