Mark Huizenga: Hey everybody, state Senator Mark Heisinga here. This is another Conversations with Mark podcast. Glad you could join us today. Today we have with us Katie from Swanson Pickle. And I got to tell you, the first time I saw this organization or operation, I was riding on the bike. I was riding on the Muscatawah trail. And you know, it's a beautiful place to ride, see nature, lots of farms and cool things out here. And then all of a sudden out of the midst of nowhere are all these huge plastic bins and I was intrigued. I'm like, what in the world is that place? And so, uh, you know, like normal person, went to Google maps and tried to figure out where I was and I'm like, Oh my word, those are all pickling vats. You guys take and process cucumbers that you grow, but you also grow from other people, I think, or get some from other people. you, you make pickles and everybody knows about pickles, but I don't think most people in Michigan know how big the pickle industry in Michigan really is. That's right. Yeah. Well, no, that's a great trail. I'm on it all the time, actually. I put a lot of miles on that trail. It's a luxury to have it so close here. yeah, pickles in Michigan are a very important crop. We're actually number one in terms of ⁓ acres of pickling cucumbers grown anywhere in the US. Michigan is top of the list by far. So I definitely want to get that out in the top of the podcast so that I don't forget to say it. I'm sure most people have no idea. Most people don't know that. Yeah. But it's an important crop here. We also have a lot of pickle infrastructure like the tanks that you said. So those are actually fiberglass tanks. have over 1,300 here. So we would be one of the largest tankyards in Michigan, but Michigan's home to most tankyards in the US. You say 1,300 of these tanks. How many gallons fit in a tank? Yeah. So I've... probably roughly 8,000, but if you do it by... 8,000 gallons. Yeah. But if you do it, the metric that we would use, so about 45,000 pounds of pickles go into each tank with another 2,500 gallons. So that's the ratio of pickles to brine. So when you start talking like that, then people start to understand the scope of just how massive this is. ⁓ We did a tour of your farm a couple years ago and had a chance to see the pickle harvesting, the cucumber harvesting, because they're not pickles until they go through the brining process. You grow cucumbers. Right. That's another thing we probably need to clear up. So ⁓ pickling is a process, but we grow a type ⁓ of cucumber called a pickling cucumber. and the reason why it's different is stomates are these ⁓ kind of the wart looking ⁓ You know, like if you pick up a pickling cucumber, you can tell it's not smooth. little bumps on there. The little bumps. And those are what allow salt to penetrate. So it's very important that ⁓ because we do all the fermentation with whole pickles, so if we didn't, or whole cucumbers, if we didn't have a way for the salt to enter the pickle fast enough, then what would happen is it would just start to rot before fermentation would actually take place, or you'd have to do some kind of cutting. process first. Sure. So yeah, we're growing a very specific and so in the industry, ⁓ normally just say pickles, but you know, it's technically a cucumber. So that always gets people. ⁓ You guys have been ⁓ huge players in this market for a long time. It's just you. It's like your family heritage. Like you go back a long time in this industry you've seen a lot of changes over the years. I remember when we did the tour, one of the things that surprised me was how ⁓ innovative you were with the equipment that harvested the pickle, the cucumber I should say again. But you're like innovators too, like you work to create this and if you're the biggest in the country there has to be innovation because who else is going to do it? Yeah, I think in farming actually there's a ton of, I think we're often early adopters technology or kind of pursuing new innovations all the time be it big or small. ⁓ That's been my experience but yeah we're Here, myself and my two brothers, and Wes, are part of the fourth generation. ⁓ Currently, my great-grandfather started the company. We've been here for quite a while. We've evolved through the years. We are still growers and we grow about 3,000 acres in total, half of which are pickling cucumbers. The other half would be corn and beans. But then we're also buying from growers all over the state of Michigan. in total, we want to get about 60 million pounds of pickles through here every year. That's incredible. That would be kind of the yeah. ⁓ So then ⁓ you brine them, they this transformation from cucumber to a pickle, and then ⁓ don't package them. You ship them to somebody else for all kinds of other uses. you tell a little bit about like who uses this and where you would find your pickles? Yeah, so we do the fermentation process here, but we're not doing any flavors or final packaging. ⁓ whether, you ⁓ our customers then add if it's going to be a dill pickle or sweet pickle, they could do ⁓ whatever flavor want. And then, you know, various kinds of either bulk packaging or individual packaging. ⁓ But these go to all your major, you know, manufacturers across the U.S. ⁓ We, lot of our pickles go to Holland, Michigan, so Kraft Heinz there. But we have customers throughout the whole ⁓ country. ⁓ I remember one time you told me that some of these get into chips ⁓ where you cut them up, ⁓ you, but ⁓ you have a vendor, some other customer that ⁓ processes, then they into restaurant pickles. Right. ⁓ Yeah, a lot of ours would be chip stock, which would be like, think McDonald's hamburger. Sure. So find their way onto McDonald's hamburger. Or ⁓ we also do a lot of relish here. So we have, ⁓ relish is an interesting product because if something's too big, too small, too crooked, like it can still be ⁓ up. You can grind that up and it looks just fine. Yeah. So we really don't waste anything. When we ⁓ harvest a field of we... ⁓ There's a market for every single size and grade there. ⁓ Obviously, the only thing that's unmarketable would be like if something was rotten, if you had a rain event or something like that. But otherwise, we can use everything. ⁓ yeah, so it's pretty efficient in that sense. Michigan is full of lots of agricultural surprises. I think a lot of times people that live in Michigan, they live in cities ⁓ don't realize how and diverse our agricultural community and industry really is in Michigan. We worked a number of years ago to help with the city of Coopersville to put in a new forest main, a wastewater main that helps a lot of organizations from Fairlife Farms to the city of Coopersville and sends that through a pipeline that's going out towards Muskegon. You guys are also beneficiaries of that too, right? Yes. And I would like to say thank you to everyone that was involved specifically to you and to everyone that was a many people came together to make that project happen. we're so thrilled it did. we're very small. We're a literal drop in the bucket in terms of the waste generation. for our business, it's very meaningful to be able to have direct access to municipal waste. So we are currently, if you look out the window, can see we're currently in construction right now to get connected. We were hoping to be sending waste via that pipeline in June of this year. So that's a pretty big game changer for us. Right now, we're capturing all our waste in tanks and then we haul it by truck to the Seeking County wastewater. it's... That's more vehicles on the ⁓ road, ⁓ more diesel fuels spent. ⁓ You need to find drivers, labor's hard to find. So it's like a win, win, win. ⁓ And I think the other part is when I talk to folks that use tools like this, it allows them to continue to grow. Sometimes folks are like, well, we're at our capacity simply because of disposing of the waste here. It just doesn't work. Yeah, you hear that a lot. mean, wastewater constraint is a top concern in food and ag. So for us, this will open up new doors. It will also, it will just help our business right now in terms of that, you know, cost efficiency, because logistically, You know, it's just hard to manage moving that waste with the tanker trucks. So the other thing I would say is that a lot of times people don't understand the downstream or the implications of what you do. So ⁓ it's you and you have contracted farmers that are growing for you. But if you can grow, that helps everybody win. Yeah. ⁓ the constraints that are there constrain everybody. So who wins other farmers, ⁓ folks that sell farm equipment. Right. People that put diesel fuel in those trucks, ⁓ people that you name it, it goes on and on. And Michigan, think, again, is the second most diverse agricultural state in the country, which most people don't know that either. But it helps us to continue to maintain and manage that. Everyone always says like we're an auto state and we are, a big manufacturing state. having that diversity and especially with food, that's important. Food and what people think about these days has changed a lot. ⁓ From I don't know right now. It just like the big craze is how do we get more protein and everything? I'm sure you're not doing protein pickles ⁓ I did see an April fool's spoof that ⁓ I think I think actually Kraft Heinz some kind of spoof on you know that they were adding protein sure pickle ⁓ But what are the kind of innovations happening and happening in the industry right now is I know a lot of times people are concerned with local and locally sourced ⁓ and healthier, what kind of things are happening in the pickling industry to fit the needs of what may be different than what your grandfather might have seen? mean, pickles has been a hot category right now for a little bit, ⁓ which we're thankful for. ⁓ know, one of the things we always say is just eat more pickles, like float the entire boat, because ⁓ we supply ⁓ many different markets, we as a company, ⁓ as long as you're consuming pickles from anywhere, we're basically pretty happy. ⁓ But we operate in the traditional space of fermentation. So we're fermenting the same way we did 50 years ago, know, or more. ⁓ We're just, we're using old brine, we recycle our brine. That's where our starter culture comes from. ⁓ It's a simple process. It's pretty easy if you've done it before. It's pretty easy, but it's also complex chemistry. pretty easy when you know you're doing, like, you know. I hadn't thought about that because ⁓ you know a lot of people talk about fermented foods right now, kimchi and other things, but do pickles fall into that same sort of category of like, this is healthy, it's good for your gut, for your biome and all this kind of stuff. Yeah, so lactobacillus is the good bacteria at work and we, know, that is as it sounds. Pickles are a fermented food. One of the spaces that's more growing in our industry would be more fresh pack pickles which aren't fully fermented, but our company is very focused because we have the investment in the tanks that you rode your bike by. we were kind of married to the fermentation segment and that's where we mostly play. ⁓ Labor is big part of ⁓ everybody's business these days. Labor is tight to find whether it's school teachers, truck drivers, or sure the people that work at your to sort and things like that. I really impressed by the automated and the very few number of people that need to walk to work to actually harvest all these pickles, cucumbers. ⁓ What are the kind of technologies are you guys implementing to make things better, more efficient, and maybe in the end of the day, better for the consumers? Yeah. ⁓ So in the field, ⁓ we're all machine harvest, as you saw, and we've been machine harvest since the 1970s. we've, pickles would otherwise be extremely ⁓ labor intensive crop and- ⁓ Backbreaking work. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we've- You know, in my lifetime, we've only had machine harvest and now the harvesters, which are actually built in ⁓ Fremont, Michigan. So Vogel harvesters that we have, you know, they're very impressive machines. ⁓ They are picking pickles better, faster with less damage than we've ever done before. So that's the field. When we bring pickles in, we are also using ⁓ optical technology. to do some of the sorting. So we use a combination of ⁓ optical lasers and now we're actually installing a camera machine this year as well. So we have two laser machines and then we'll have one camera. Find the bad ones, the rotten ones don't ⁓ look quite right. So for a material, because if you imagine a field, ⁓ when you harvest the field without people, you bring in a lot sticks and dirt and... ⁓ Beads. Yeah, all of it. that's growing in the field, right? So we have a process in place and we use water to remove some of that, you know, like the dirt in that debris. But then there's a lot of corn, what we call corn trash, which should just be if you planted corn or potatoes the previous year, then you're going to get some of those. Some stock didn't decay, it's going to be pulled back in. Yeah, so that's been a game changer for us. I mean, without the investments in the technology, we wouldn't be able to do what we're doing. our paybacks are over a lot of years. It takes don't do this today to see the return on investment. Yeah. We're very long-term orientated. ⁓ We're in it for the long haul and we ⁓ don't expect that something's paying back overnight or even in it. So it ⁓ takes a while, but ⁓ the investment in the technology been necessary just to maintain and survive. ⁓ We've also invested in housing. as an incentive for workers to come. Often housing is a part of that package ⁓ because labor is hard to find, but seasonal labor is even harder to find. So we're doing a lot with mechanization as well, apart from the specific laser and camera technology, mechanizing everything that we can to make it less of a backbreaking job. now when you go out, if you do it, which we don't give public tours, but If I was to take you out in the yard right now, ⁓ you would see a lot of people operating equipment, but not a lot of backbreaking work anymore. ⁓ I mean, that's a part of it still. It's still a hard job. But I'd say too, farm life has changed. I grew up on a farm and so ⁓ I was ⁓ the kid crawling on my hands and knees picking radishes and onions and all this kind of stuff mechanize it all. ⁓ does create a better work environment. It's also safer. ⁓ People away from that, less back injuries and all that kind of stuff. Do you have a story, a personal story about ⁓ maybe an employer or why this work is important for not only you, but like our state? Yeah. I mean, we have, ⁓ one thing that we often say is, you know, we're a family business, but we have families for us too. have, ⁓ we've had, have fathers and sons, we have husbands, wives, we have mothers, sons, mean, all the combination of things. And that's in our full-time and our seasonal workforce. So we definitely have a family business culture that extends to every employee as well. We're very blessed to have a lot of loyal employees that have worked here over 20 years in many cases or keep coming back every season. They become like family then to you. we try to treat people with respect and hopefully they want to keep coming back and working for us. But yeah, I think everyone here takes pride in what they're doing as do all of us. Sure. Awesome. Katie, thank you so much for your time today. You're welcome. For ⁓ taking away the mystery of what pickles are like in Michigan. It's amazing. Thanks so much. Thank you.