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Health & Fitness

Sustainability as a Moral Ethic

Profile of a business that is an example of a business that while not perfect is becoming "sustainable."

There is more to sustainability than changing to LED lights, composting food waste and adopting efficiencies. How you treat your employees is just as important as reducing or eliminating hazardous waste. Serving the community is as important as reduce, reuse and recycle.

The topic of sustainability is so broad as to be overwhelming. To provide a frame of reference lets look at an example of a business that is striving to provide an excellent product while making service its mission.

BROETJE ORCHARDS was started in 1968 in Benton Washington. By Ralph and Cheryl Broetje. They started with a cherry orchard and struggled for the first few years. By 1980 they added 400 acres in the Columbia River Basin and started growing apples and they have expanded from there.

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Today "As a recognized leader in the apple industry for over 25 years, Broetje Orchards is one of the largest privately owned apple orchards in the United States with more than 6,000 acres of apples and cherries. The company's acreage includes approximately 5,000 contiguous acres near Prescott, 625 in Benton City and another 550 devoted to certified organic fruit production in Wallula, WA."

Broetje Orchards has a way of conducting business that seeks to uphold the concept of the "quadruple bottom line," where we balance profit, plant, people, and purpose.

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While this author would like to see the entire acreage converted to organic methods (which would take many years), I have to admire their commitment to community. 50 to 75% of their profits are rolled back into the community.

To their employees - they offer job security, housing, childcare, scholarship programs, and schooling summer camps for kids, profit sharing, fair wages, and health care and reasonable work hours.

Broetje Orchards uses a "servant first" management style that treats every employee as a whole person with leadership potential within their families, community and the business. At Broetje Orchards they promote from within the business.

Environment – promote a reduce, reuse and recycle strategy with production inputs, careful use and monitoring and use of water and adoption of eco-friendly fuel alternatives.

Philanthropy - Donating at least 50% of pre-tax profits annually to Vista Hermosa Foundation for projects serving the most under-served communities in Kenya, Uganda, India, Haiti, Mexico, Central America, and the United States.

In 1987, the Frente Democratico Compesino was established and has been working to develop agriculture, rural communities, and fair policies in the state of Chihuahua Mexico. This project has enabled 164 producers to sell more than 1,200 tons of apples at prices that earn the equivalent of 146% of the Mexican minimum wage per producer. 

100% of the cherry crop profits goes to charity. In 2010 they donated $460,000 to such organizations as World Vision (Mexico City), Food for the Poor (Haiti), a Tri-Cities medical clinic and a long list of others.

Not all businesses can donate 50% to 75% of their profits to the community. The point has more to do with a fundamental difference in the reason for a company's existence. Broetje Orchards does not exist for the sole purpose of profit. It exists as a vehicle to create stable and healthy communities. That core purpose informs their choices and the work ethic of everyone employed. Over time their business model will continue to improve.

It is that kind of core ethic consciously executed that will result in a sustainable business model.

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