At first, I didn’t know what fully went into regenerative agriculture. However, after having talked with Aran Urlacher, Regional Farm Manager for Rainier Fruit, I now have a pretty strong belief that the soil is one of the most important parts of the produce-growing process.
Sustainability is an idea, practice, and lifestyle that’s continuing to gain traction and popularity. For companies looking to build business with the modern consumer, implementing sustainability practices is a move that is best to follow. Retailers, too, are looking to companies to help them create more sustainable programs that address the needs of those consumers in addition to their own goals. But, what if this isn’t enough? What if we as an industry have to think bigger? Or perhaps, granular—like the soil. This is where regenerative agriculture comes in.
According to Aran, the soil is a space that goes beyond the concept of sustainability. In order for nutritious and healthy produce to grow, the soil itself has to become more tenable. After speaking with Aran, someone who’s passionate about reviving and rejuvenating the earth, I now believe the best produce comes from the soil with the least amount of negative human impacts.
Aran grew up on an apple farm with his father and grandfather, elbows deep in the dirt. Just as he was fascinated with the rich complexities and simple power soil provides, I now am, too. Through Aran’s eyes, I see just how important soil is to producing nutritious produce, as well as reaffirming my goal to sustaining, nay, regenerating Mother Earth.
Aran Urlacher: When people pick up a pen and draw a quick sketch of their favorite plant, most people don’t draw the roots. Since we can’t see them, we tend to forget about them when really, they’re the most important part.
We look at regenerative agriculture as taking care of the soil. The soil is truly where nutrition begins. If we have the healthiest soil, we’ll have the healthiest trees, the healthiest fruit, and the healthiest humans. Sustainability is a word that gets thrown around a lot and, to be frank, I don’t like it. To me, sustainable means maintaining the current status quo, and I believe we can do much better. Regenerative is a much more precise word for what we do at Rainier Fruit, because, at the heart, we’re regenerating the nutrients in the soil.
AU: Our goal as a company has always been to provide customers with the most nutritious, delicious, and nutrient-dense fruit we can. Rainier wants to give them the best nutritional bang for their buck. We’ve always held that goal, but incorporating regenerative agriculture checks all the boxes.
All fruit is not equal. There can be a great deal of variation in nutritional content and flavor between two apples, all based on how they were grown. People are just beginning to understand the important role that gut health can play in our bodies—all the millions of strains of bacteria performing a role in our gut microbiome have a profound impact on our overall health. We think of soil as nature’s gut.
AU: About five years ago, the status quo was to have a strip of pure dirt under the orchard trees with nothing growing in it. I could never find any worms in that dirt, which concerned me. So, we put some wood bark mulch out there. Within a couple of months, we could see life coming back into the soil—little earwigs, roly-polys, and soon earthworms. Not only did it make the soil healthier, it also made it easier to work by helping it hold moisture and stay more aerated. From there, we evaluated the quantity and type of inputs we used and began making progressive changes. Immediately, we saw new life begin to flourish in the soil.
We know now that better soil leads to more nutritious and better-tasting fruit. The fruit also stores longer and has less disease because it’s been given the full spectrum of nutrients that it needs.
The whole idea behind regenerative agriculture is to take a wholistic approach. There’s a symbiotic relationship between the microbiome in the soil and the tree. We think of the microbiome as a community—bacteria, microorganisms, nematodes, fungi, and more all interacting symbiotically with one another. We work to build up that microbiome to essentially let the soil take care of the plant. The whole idea is to get the soil biology right so the plant’s defenses are working optimally.
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; they also happen to be the compounds that give us flavor in fruit. Insects can’t metabolize plant secondary metabolites, so they naturally tend to stay away. The result is better-tasting fruit with reduced insect pressure and less need for intervention from us, the farmers. It’s really an amazing system.
“If we have the healthiest soil, we’ll have the healthiest trees, the healthiest fruit, and the healthiest humans.”
— Aran Urlacher, Regional Farm Manager, Rainier Fruit
AU: Right now, we’re working to heal our soil. In the past, conventional techniques relied on a broad spectrum of pesticides, and it was the norm. Those efforts were really borrowing from our own future, and it helped us learn new methods of pest control and inputs. Now, it’s time to pay back what we borrowed. It takes a lot of money, time, and effort to get the soil where it needs to be. Eventually the system will become more self-sustaining and require less fertilizer, less fuel used to drive through the orchards, and less from us to produce better fruit. It’s an investment in our future.
AU: Among the people at Rainier Fruit, there’s a mentality of growing and selling the highest quality fruit possible. This mindset radiates throughout the company, which helps eliminate any fear of thinking outside the box and challenging the status quo. People at every level are engaged and committed to regenerative agriculture, so there’s a willingness to invest in the future because we all understand it’s the right thing to do on every level. In doing so, we are upholding our goal in being the best stewards we can with what we’ve been given, and that’s part of what we offer to our customers. We don’t get paid more for more nutritious fruit or contributing to a healthier planet, but it’s still the right thing to do.
AU: Technology is a wonderful thing. The goal is to be mindful and conscientious about how we integrate it. We’ve seen so much development over the past 20 to 30 years, and a lot of the changes have been good, but not all of them. When pesticides came about, there was a “wow” moment when people realized combating weeds or insects could be as easy as spraying a chemical. We’re still dealing with the repercussions of that way of thinking, and I hope future generations can look at technological advances and ask “Should we?” instead of just asking “Can we?” We use technology every day in many aspects of what we do, and regenerative agriculture is a sound science with a focus on soil health. My advice: Think about the bigger picture and ask yourself the question—will this end up being a tool or a weapon?
AU: Rainier began a huge initiative back in June 2019, and we anticipate it will take us well into the 2020s and 2030s. The Holy Grail of soil is called “soil organic matter.” It’s the stuff that gives soil structure, aerates it, feeds the microbiome, and holds moisture for root systems. Our area of Washington is a desert climate, which forces us to focus on increasing soil organic matter. After a lot of research and testing, we think we’ve found the answer. Humus is the gold standard of compost, but it’s very hard to get, so we figured out how to make it.
We’ve dedicated 20 acres of land to making our own humus, and we’re using our own waste to do it: apples that can’t be sold, grape skins and stems from our winemaking operations, and chipped up old trees that no longer produce fruit. We created a closed loop system to turn 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 create our own batches in 12 weeks. A lot goes into the process, but what comes out is second to none.
We do a lot of on-farm experimentation, and for the most part, we have success in our trials. Rainier Fruit has strong guiding principles of stewardship that keep us headed in the right direction, and we monitor our operations from year to year until we see trends emerge.
Sustainability provides an umbrella for regenerative agriculture, but regenerative agriculture itself is far from a detail—it is a movement. With visionaries such as Aran at the forefront of companies like Rainier Fruit, one can only imagine what’s on the horizon for hopefully a more lush and healthy planet. 
