SOLEDAD, CA - Earth Day is quickly approaching on April 22, and Braga Fresh is using it as an opportunity to celebrate the progress of its ongoing sustainability efforts. The supplier, home of the popular Josie’s Organics brands, has upheld its commitment to harvesting and marketing regeneratively grown crops, trialing a low-soil tillage concept designed to increase the carbon content in the soil.
“We are committed to sharing our successes and failures as we focus on increasing our data set to validate our trial findings,” said Eric Morgan, Vice President, Environmental Science and Resources.
According to a press release, this year is the fourth year Braga Fresh is trialing regenerative agriculture practices to better understand the implications and identify the pieces of the concept that may be applied to current commercial farming practices. This is done to reduce soil tillage utilized by the industry in vegetable production.
In 2023, Braga Fresh increased the total amount of acres regeneratively farmed, harvested, and sold to 70 from 32 acres in 2022. This regenerative acreage produced 17,669 cartons sold to the U.S. market under the Josie’s Organics Brand.
This year, the eco-friendly product will be marketed with the Carbon Capture Farming mark.
Access to recent grant funds over the past year has enabled the company to formalize a study of a regenerative versus traditional farming approach using 15 metrics and seven healthy soil indicators. As the release noted, multiple practices are used to implement the trials, including Agrology soil probe sensors, plant sap analysis, data management, permanent plantings, crop rotation, intercropping, cover cropping, soil testing, and water management technology. All regenerative trails are also grown to meet GMP and LGMA standards.
“Our intent is to learn, adapt, and demonstrate our proof of concept and Salinas Valley farming practices where possible,” Morgan added. “Those changes could reduce our overall CO2 emissions.”
In celebration of this year’s Earth Day, the supplier is sharing its learnings through a YouTube video series. To dive in, click here!
For more industry news and updates, look out for our little apple logo.
