Chillán!

Driscoll’s corporate offices are located in very non-corporate Watsonville, CA for a reason. We’re a berry company. The Central Coast is where a small group of Watsonville farmers founded the Strawberry Institute in 1944 to grow better berries through undertaking the arduous task of research and development of better plant varieties. Now with Driscoll’s expansion to production locations worldwide, like Chile, we do that here, too. We grow berry plants, and our independent growers are the ones who take those plants and carefully grow what you and I enjoy everyday. To learn more about the Driscoll’s story (which I’m sure you’re all dying to do) head to: http://www.driscolls.com/about.php. Very good stuff. Anyhow, Driscoll’s is an ag company, so the big city Santiago office environment has been a change.

I believe that the fruit first farmer atmosphere up in Watsonville has found its way down here. This was especially evident when the two GM’s, who built Driscoll’s of Chile (DOC) from nothing 14 years ago, told me on my very first day that they wanted me to see the fields next week. “It’s out in the fields where the business is, not here in Santiago.” I felt right at home. So without fail that next Monday my bags were packed again and I was on a flight with Sofia and Mauricio, as well as three great blueberry/food safety guys from Driscoll’s USA (DSA) headed south to Chillán. I had no idea that I was about to be initiated into the blueberry group.

Chillán is a cool southern town of about 170,000 located about 400km south of Santiago in the Bío Bío region, Ñuble province. The name Chillán is an indigenous word for “where the Sun is sitting”, founded in 1580. I’m pretty sure North America was still more like Native America at that time. In addition, Chile’s independence leader Bernardo O’Higgins who declared independence from Spain in 1817 was born in Chillán, so it’s an important town (Wikipedia is great). We would spend next to no time there. We started-out appropriately in Valle del Sol, where I quickly learned that every variety of blueberry is not created equal. For example Oneal likes the soil a bit more sandy, and the darker leafed Misty is much more robust, likes to be a bit closer together. The broad, round leaves of Toro is a easy giveaway, with all its canes shooting out from almost the same stalk below. As we went through the rows, we talked to the growers and ranch managers. We saw the pride they took in every row of fruit, tasted the bigger blues as they turned colorful and inviting. I learned so much just sidling-up to a conversation and eavesdropping. You never want to have too much fruit and not enough leaves. Oneal and Misty varieties are early seasonI knew that unlike straws or raz, blueberries are a deciduous plant, so the first couple of years of production will be low. With some blueberry varieties you want cool mornings and bright afternoons…which more coastal areas tend to bring. O’Neal, Misty, Brigitta, Duke, Toro, Elliot, Berkeleyamong about 130 other varieties of blues are out there who are either Northern Highbush, Southern Highbush, Half-high and Wild Lowbush.

You never thought you’d learn so much about blueberries.

After a very thoughtfull lunch of hamburgers (a little slice of home from our hospitable guests) and Crystal (the beer) near the ranch houses we piled in the minivan to drive off to another ranch. Driving down backcountry road after backcountry road, I saw so many more trees in the fields than what I was used to. Poplars swayed in the breezes in straight lines, cutting the wind for ranches below and creating a dramatic skyline with rolling hills in the background. Little houses spotted the fields, other more affluent haciendas set back quietly among the groves as we passed over bridges and through a maze of small villages and endless crops. I didn’t know which side of the window to look out, generally picking the side with the best view of the Andes or a lone snowcapped volcano looming large and faded in the distance.

We visited many other ranches in and around the area over the next two days…culminating with a tour of the cooler: Frigorífico San Nicolás. Cool process, literally, of how the smaller/poor colored blueberries are weeded-out as they go through the line, funneled into those wonderful plastic clamshells and boxed for cold storage. We had to wear white coats, gloves, masks and hair covers…reminiscent of visiting my brother at Genentech’s medicine production facilities. Hey, if we’re going to produce berries bursting with cancer preventing antioxidants, we have to be pretty clean about it. We may not be a bunch of scientists finding and producing the cure to cancer, but we’re sure trying to do our part the best way farmers can. And they’re much tastier than any pill, anyway. Good stuff.