Quick Take
After Martinelli’s announced it would not renew contracts with local apple growers, one Pajaro Valley farmer has been flooded with calls, ideas and offers from community members eager to help replace the major buyer. While potential partnerships with school districts, nonprofits and other local organizations show promise, growers say finding markets large enough to absorb the thousands of tons of apples once sold to Martinelli’s remains a significant challenge.
Last week was a “big rush,” said Jake Mann, a fifth-generation apple grower in the Pajaro Valley. On Monday, Lookout broke the story that Watsonville juice and cider company S. Martinelli & Co. told farmers in the area it won’t renew their contracts, and his phone started ringing off the hook.
“I’ve been getting calls and messages from friends, business contacts in the [Pajaro] Valley, and people I’ve worked with in years past from the Bay Area – all over,” he said. “I’m glad that this issue is out in the open now, and that other people are seeing what’s going on. It’s encouraging.”
Friends and former colleagues were upset that Martinelli’s, which has traditionally purchased the vast majority of apples grown in the valley, was pulling back from using local apples, possibly in favor, as Mann and other growers believe, of purchasing fruit from Washington state at a fraction of the cost.
People offered advice on new markets or business opportunities to explore, ranging from the unlikely – establishing a grower-owned juice company in the Watsonville area – to promising, such as focusing on individual sales.
Any kind of shift away from selling thousands of 1-ton bins of apples to Martinelli’s each season will be difficult.
“It’s not an easy pivot,” said Mann. “We need somebody that’s going to buy 2,000 bins of apples in order for things to stay somewhat the same.”
One idea Mann is eager to explore is selling to nearby school districts. Kelsey Perusse, the nutrition director at Live Oak School District, reached out to Mann to see about buying apples for students in the Monterey Bay area. “While [LOSD] can take a pretty small amount of fruit, [Perusse] is in contact with all the school districts in the area, from north Monterey County up to San Lorenzo Valley, and they all need fruit. If we could get that together, that could be a nice sale,” he said.
Currently, LOSD purchases around 400 pounds of apples per week, but they are all coming from out of state, Perusse told Lookout via email. Many school districts are prioritizing local purchasing, and the state provides funds to schools to purchase foods grown and produced in California. “Upon reading the article, this seemed like an opportunity for partnership. One of our goals is to create a local ecosystem of food buying to give stability to our local growers,” Perusse wrote.
It’s early in the conversation, but it feels promising, she said: “This could be a real opportunity to support our local farmers while serving more California fresh produce to our students.”
Grey Bears, a Santa Cruz-based nonprofit that provides food for older adults in the county, reached out to purchase a bin of apples every week. Mann is open to the partnership, but points out that sales like this are small, and the desired product – market-grade fruit – is different from cider apples, which are pressed for juice.
“There’s a big gap between the scale that we grow at and we’ve been able to operate at selling to Martinelli, and what is the next thing that’s available,” he said.
Right now, Mann’s not closing any doors: “I need to speak with everyone and consider all the options. You could put it together to make a viable business, but it’s not super clear how to move that fruit yet.”
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