Organic fruit, vegetables, nuts, mushrooms and grains are grown all over the world by hundreds of thousands of farmers who are certified by third party organizations to grow without synthetic or water soluble fertilizers, without genetic modification, without chemicals to kill bacteria, viruses, insect pests; and in a way that improves soil culture and health with every crop.

As if by magic, in a never-ending international ballet of mammoth proportions, sea containers, tractor trailers and local farm trucks transport a complete range of commodities, from oyster mushrooms to walnuts, avocados to lemons, bunch carrots to butternut squash, to retailers, home delivery companies, restaurants and farmers markets every day of the year, from Tokyo to Toronto, Paris to Penticton, Manchester to Madrid, San Francisco to Seoul. In every village or city this bounty is delivered by restaurant suppliers, farmers delivering direct to local stores and markets, conventional produce distributors supplying organics to their own chains of grocery stores, and, like us, certified organic produce handlers selling to our independent customer base. There is no master plan, no big crop management plan in the sky - farmers in some communities don't even discuss what they are growing with their fellow farmers.

A huge percentage of our organic food is grown by farmers in third world countries who have never traveled outside their own village, yet, and this amazes us - we all expect to walk into the produce department at our local store and find a selection of every variety of fruit or vegetable, mushroom or berry, year-round, without realizing that it is, really, a miracle that this incredible process happens every day.

As a certified organic wholesaler serving hundreds of customers, including rural food cooperatives, natural food retailers across Western Canada, or other wholesalers as far away as Los Angeles and Toronto, we are, like all other distributors, primarily a transportation company. That is our job! We bring in food from all over the Americas; pallets of lemons and grapes, kale and leeks, consolidate them in our warehouse, and then send totally different looking pallets, with 20 or even 50 different items on them, right back out on our own delivery trucks, or commercial carriers to our customers, in White Rock, Roberts Creek, Red Deer, Regina or Invermere. We are, in that respect, no different than food distributors everywhere, be they conventional or organic. Billions of people around the world depend on this happening every day - and on top of that, we also make sure that there are strawberries for Valentine's Day, lots of yams and sweet potatoes for Christmas, and watermelon on the hottest days of the year. Well, as we said, it is actually amazing, and somewhat magical, and it is out of the commitment and drive and the love to grow food and feed people that this process happens day after day, year after year, all over the world.

None of it is easy! We are in the grip of changing climactic conditions that make it harder every year. Not one grower we work with doesn't have to stress every day about excess heat, sudden frosts, freak hail storms, flash floods, water shortages or tropical storms that can destroy a crop in literally minutes. We worry right along with them, and then we also have to worry about avalanches or floods closing highways, or strikes by truckers or dockworkers that can delay moving food back out to our customers.

So are we just another produce wholesaler like hundreds of others across the continent? We hope not! From our farming roots, we began in 1999 with a mission to bring more of the hundreds of Certified Organic fruit and vegetable, berry, nut and mushroom farms in B.C. into the commercial marketplace than the very few whose products were found on store shelves in Western Canada 10 years ago. We have done this, step by step, with over 90 B.C. farms over the past decade. Farming is much more than chucking seeds into the ground, managing the crop and hoping someone buys it. We help farmers develop cooperative shipping docks, uniform packaging, proper seed selection, crop contracts and marketing plans. We have visited dozens of farms in B.C., working with growers to see them move to larger and more financially sustainable operations. Over the years we have extended this to reliable relationships with farms in Washington, Oregon, California and Mexico. You see, Discovery Organics doesn't just move food around - we establish relationships - binding, long term, delightful friendships with farmers, from Bruce and Brenda Miller in Pemberton, who expand their volume and selection of world class organic potatoes every year, to Patrick Struebi in Michoacan, Mexico, who directs and markets for the nearly 200 small Fair Trade mango and avocado growers of the Pragor Coop in Uruapan. So shipping and trucking are part of it, but we always consider the cornerstones: trust, transparency, commitment and relationships - with our employees, customers and farmer vendors.

We are a small company, tiny, actually, in comparison to some of the giant distributors across North America, but we take what we do very seriously. We have a mission to feed people, to make sure that the small farmers we work with (and most of the farmers we work with are small) stay in business, by increasing local production of in-season and storage crops, working with growers along the Pacific Coast of the U.S. who provide for us when our local growers have been driven off the fields for the winter by frost and snow, and contracting crops with growers in other countries who have the right growing conditions to produce year-round, but lack resources and relationships to be financially viable. We have visited nearly every farm that appears on our price list, here in B.C. and south as far as our ginger grower in the Peruvian rainforest. This has involved trips by our buyers and planners to farms in Grindrod, Cranbrook, Naramata, Carnation, Dungeness, Corvalis, Clackamus, Hollister, Santa Cruz, Salinas, El Centro, Mexicali, Ensenada, Hermosillo, Caborca, Guyamas, Loreto, Nueva Italia, San Blas, Tecoman, Tuxtla, Caracha, Sullana, Chimbote, Mala, Tumbo Grande,
So these are the families who grow your food - people we love, respect and admire, and who rely on us to bring their crops to market. These people are dedicated to organics, to the planet, to their communities and their families. We wouldn't be in business without them, and we hope that through the pictures and stories we offer on our website, you will feel the trust and strength we have in these relationships, and share the joy that makes our work a labour of love.