Behind the Harvest: Private Equity and Worker Safety at Grimmway Farms

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Introduction

Grimmway Farms is the largest carrot grower in the world, growing through acquiring smaller operations since the 1990s when it bought the farm that invented baby carrots. Grimmway was acquired by private equity firm Teays River Investments in 2021 and has continued to grow through acquisitions, controlling between 40-50% of the US carrot market share in recent years. Grimmway and its largest competitor Bolthouse Farms, also owned by a private equity firm, control up to 80% of US carrot production combined. 

“There’s only two sources,” Adam Waglay, cofounder and co-CEO of Bolthouse owner Butterfly Equity, told Forbes. “We joke around — it’s kind of like the OPEC of carrots.”

In its present form, Grimmway Produce Group operates in California and nine other states from Washington to Florida. Grimmway grows carrots, potatoes, and other vegetables and is sold under many different labels, including Cal Organic, Bunny-Luv, and department store generic brands, such as Target, Publix, and Trader Joe’s.

As a key player in the organic produce and carrot industry, many customers buy their products because of perceived environmental and health impacts, but may not think much about the thousands of farmworkers that do the hard work of planting, cultivating, and harvesting carrots across the company’s growing regions. Grimmway workers make it possible to stock grocery stores around the world with year-round carrots and other vegetables, but the company has been plagued by a series of labor abuse scandals that Teays River has failed to address. 

As private equity firms continue to acquire large portions of the US agricultural supply chain, these firms and their investors must focus on the agricultural workers that allow these companies and our nations’ food system to operate. It will require a longer term investment in improved working conditions to turn around a long history of labor rights abuses in the agricultural industry. 

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