Page 49 - Innovation Delaware 2018

AGRICULTURE
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will relocate about 165 jobs from Georgia to Delaware.
“For the last 100 years,
the company has been headquartered in Seaford, and for hopefully the next 100 we’re going to be headquartered in Millsboro,” says Cathy Bassett, director of public relations.
Another big change
at Allen Harim in recent years has been a shift from commodity-based sales — essentially chicken in a box, sold to other processers — to more retail sales. Before the Harim acquisition, Moran explains, the company did just 6 to 8 percent of its business in retail, known in
the industry as “tray pack” chicken. Now, that number is up around 25 percent, and the company’s biggest customers come with impressive bona fides. They include Whole Foods, along with Shaw’s and Market Basket in New England
and Lidl, a German-based boutique grocer with plans for major expansion here in the U.S. (Lidl already has a location in Middletown.)
“We have some excellent customers, like Whole Foods and others, that are requiring more of producers, and we’ve stepped up and are meeting that challenge,” Bassett says. “In 2015,
we were among the first companies to go no antibiotic ever on our chicken. I think that reflects a trend and a change in the marketplace, and we were on the cutting edge of that, and you’re seeing other companies follow suit.”
Allen Harim and its
230 independent growers (half are in Delaware,
half are in Maryland), its breeding facility in North Carolina, and its hatchery and processing plant here in Delaware are certified by the Global Animal Partnership; they are all-vegetable fed; they are process-verified by the USDA; and they have
Halal-certified products. Some of those certifications mean the company opens itself up to regular visits from independent auditors.
Moran says getting
good marks on the audits comes down to training and continuous improvement. “We don’t wait until a week before the audit comes,” Moran notes. “It’s being driven every day to do the right things and follow the policies and procedures that we have in place. And I’m out and about quite a bit
— and we just reiterate and reinforce that this is what we’re about.” ID
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JAMES WADDINGTON
Q: Has the organic farm movement had much impact in Kent County?
JW: We’re seeing more of it. We have some
very successful models of family farms that
are hitting all the high notes in vegetable and fruit production. Fifer Orchards comes to
mind. Fifer’s has a very successful farm store on their site, they are active with agritourism, they have school bus loads
Q: Over the years, what has driven the shift to commodities?
JW: As the poultry industry has continued to grow, we see more and more local production of commodity crops
that support it. Certainly to the extent that they have a local market, it makes sense. It’s not as labor intensive
as vegetable production. It’s not quite as dependent upon variables — it can be affected by drought and it can
be affected by too much rain, but it’s not quite as negatively affected by those extremes as vegetable or fruit production is.
Q: How would you describe the overall economic impact of farming in Kent County?
JW: It’s equipment, it’s maintenance facilities that work on equipment, it’s companies like Southern States or Clark Seeds that deal in volume with fertilizer and with all the ancillary products that are needed in agriculture. If you have a food hub, there are a number of businesses that benefit from the actual agricultural production side of the business. But it also becomes very pervasive in terms of people that have more money to spend because they’re making money from agriculture, so they buy groceries, they go out and eat dinner, they frequent restaurants — it’s more complex than somebody just planting 300 acres of soybeans. It’s who’s providing the equipment for it, who’s selling the seed — there’s this whole network of businesses that are relying upon agriculture. ID
of kids coming to tour their facility. They have an active Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) business, which they’ve promoted very effectively. Additionally, we see a lot of advancement with hydroponic growing and aquaculture, alternative agricultural methods. So whether or not any of that can be adaptable to Kent County remains to be seen. Certainly the possibility of providing year-round fresh produce to local restaurants is something that some of our farms have been looking at, what they would have to be able to do in order to do that.
INNOVATION DELAWARE 47
ERIC CROSSAN