Burroughs Family Farms
Left to right: Zeb, Meridith, Rosie and Ward Burroughs.
After growing almonds for years, the Burroughs family wanted to certify their orchards as organic. But between the high costs of certification and the instability of market pricing, organic almond farming can be a risky business. The Burroughs couldn’t make the switch on their own. Equal Exchange supported the Burroughs by buying their transitional almonds at above-market prices, even when they couldn’t be retailed as an organic product. Now, the Burroughs acreage is fully certified; they have even started one new orchard organically from the ground up. This is no small feat! Young almond trees are especially susceptible to pests and drastic changes in climate (a common occurrence these days). Located in the heart of San Joaquin Valley where RoundUp otherwise rules supreme, the choices that the Burroughs family are making amount to a lot of risk, but even more reward. They’re setting an example for all of us to lead with our hearts and move boldly together into the future.
Driving through the orchards is a beautiful sight: green, gently rolling hills as far as you can see. To an untrained eye, the orchard might appear messy and unkempt: several different grasses growing between trees, native plants lining the perimeter. But if what you see is chaos, then what you’d be missing is the deliberate intention behind it all. You’d be missing the root systems of those grasses underground - those long, tendriled arms which hold the soil and capture the rain. And you’d be missing the rich habitat that the variety of bees, birds (including bald eagles and great horned owls), and monarch butterflies all call home. This is organic regenerative agriculture - taking advantage of the soil as a place for plants to grow, which take carbon out of the atmosphere and pull it back down into the soil. In turn, the soil is better equipped to hold water, and land exists as a productive habitat rather than empty, sterile space.
Burroughs Family Farms hasn’t always been organic. Rosie Burroughs, farm and family matriarch, shared with us that her journey as a mother ultimately led to her journey into organic farming. It took Rosie’s persistence and her daughter Benina’s knowledge of organic farming to propel the Burroughs out of conventional agriculture and into the sustainable methods they employ today. At first, Rosie's husband, Ward, was skeptical. In addition to the challenges of completely changing the methods they’d been using for decades, farming organically also required a paradigm shift; seeing the world and its people, land, air, water, and animals, as interconnected.
These days, the Burroughs implement the ABCs of agriculture in their holistic operations: Almonds, Beef, Chickens, Dairy, and Eggs. Old cotton wagons have been refurbished into mobile chicken coops, allowing the Burroughs to easily relocate chickens throughout the orchards, where they can graze on grasses and in turn, fertilize the trees.
In 2015, The Burroughs completed transitioning all of their fields and have since started an orchard organically from the ground up. Listening to Ward talk about this orchard in particular, it's clear that any trace of skepticism that he may have once felt has been replaced with pride.
