farm

Riverina Fresh

Riverina Fresh: Heart of the land

Riverina Fresh has been producing dairy products since 1922. Twenty local farmers are responsible for its award-winning milk and hope to continue their profession for generations to come. The morning sunrise casts a pink glow over Simone and Neil Jolliffe’s property in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales. It’s a frosty start to the day at 3°C but the 250 Holstein Friesian cows lined up for the morning milking don’t seem to mind. They take their orderly position one behind the other like they’re waiting in line for a footy finals ticket. Like any diehard fan, there’s a bit of argy-bargy to ensure a prime position, but they all get their turn in the herringbone dairy, with the reward of a feed for their efforts. 
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A model Costa Rican farm

October is Eduardo Gurdian’s favourite month of the year. It’s the start of crop season, when weather conditions are optimal for cherry picking, when staff receive a steady income, and the month he expects his first child to be born. “October will be a good challenge for production volume and sleepless nights,” Eduardo says. Eduardo is a sixth generation coffee professional. It’s too early to predict if his unborn son will join the family dynasty one day, but Eduardo is working hard to ensure he creates a sustainable legacy for the next generation of Costa Rican producers. 
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Califia Farm’s plant power

In 1980, Greg Steltenpohl bought a box of oranges and borrowed a couple of hundreds bucks to buy a hand squeezing machine so he could sell fresh orange juice out of a van around San Francisco. “That was my first taste of business entrepreneurialism in the beverage industry,” Greg describes.  The small start-up would one day form the basis of Odwalla, a multimillion-dollar US supplier of fresh juice and nourishing healthy beverages, which Greg founded. The brand, later purchased by Coca-Cola, remains one of the fastest growing beverage ranges in the company’s suite of products. “Odwalla was a huge education in the business world of beverages,” Greg says. “I built it from scratch into a medium-size business. We were a publicly-owned company for a while and it became one of the first natural food companies that broke out into American mainstream culture. I’m extremely proud of that.”
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