[memb_add_tag tag_id=”2692″]
Back in 2010 Beaverton Foods purchased Pacific Farms Inc outright for an undisclosed amount.
Beaverton Foods stop growing wasabi and have shut the whole operation down.
If you don’t know Pacific Farms, this was a Wasabi Farm based at Florence, Oregon founded by Roy Carver in 1995. They provided fresh wasabi to a small but growing US market during that period.
When Beaverton purchased Pacific Farms they said that they wanted to control the US fresh wasabi market, and also ensure the continuity of being able to use fresh wasabi in their products.
They apparently dismantled the Pacific Farm setup and moved it across country to their main base in Hillsboro.
Just found out that they have shut down the Pacific Farm operation in all but name. They decided that growing fresh wasabi was too difficult (their words).
So now they have gone back to their old system of importing frozen wasabi paste from Japan. They sell that under the Pacific Farm label.
It looks like all the wasabi growing knowledge built up during the Pacific Farm era of 1995 – 2010 has now been lost to the community.
This though has provided an opportunity for another Wasabi Grower to move into the space just vacated, and take back some of that fresh wasabi US market. Is that you?
Going back to the fact that Beaverton Foods found growing wasabi “too difficult”, I suspect that they found what we found many years ago.
Growing Wasabi is not a corporate venture.
To be a Wasabi Grower people need to have a significant amount of skin invested into the project. When it is their business, their money and their ability to provide for their families at stake then the mindset changes.
Just being a manager who gets paid irrespective of the final outcome is, we have found, a recipe for failure.
Growing Wasabi requires a person who is fully invested and committed to making it work. Even if that means they stay up all night to fix or solve a problem. Going home when your paid hours are up is not an option. You can do that when you on a wage or salary.
In the last 12 months or so, 100% Wasabia japonica has been mentioned and endorsed on a number of TV shows in the US.
The product is slowly gaining traction in the health and gourmet food segments of the population.
Join the Wasabi Growers Club here.
Membership is USD$97.00 per year.
Michel Van Mellaerts (The Wasabi Maestro) is the recognized World authority and expert on the practical Growing, Processing and Marketing of Wasabia japonica. He and his wife have been commercially growing Wasabia japonica longer than anyone else outside Japan.
Trained as an Engineer he has invented and installed many improved growing systems into their farms. These enable high quality Wasabi to be grown anywhere in the World.
The Wasabi Maestroes have set up commercial Wasabi growing farms from the Arctic Circle to Southern New Zealand, including the Equator. They have worked with individual growers, national governments, and investment groups on four continents.
These growing systems have reduced growing times by nearly 67%, improved yield and quality of the Wasabi rhizome, and increased the levels of active ingredients by nearly 100%. It is these active ingredients that independent scientific studies show kills cancer cells and improves human health.
They pioneered the use of Wasabia japonica in the Nutraceutical and Medical industries. They are at the leading edge of research into the benefits of Wasabi on human and animal health.
The Wasabi Maestroes offer a Training and Consultancy service for potential and actual Wasabi growers who only want to learn from the best. Others spend their time floundering around trying to find out what information is useful and what isn’t.
The Training has been proven and improved over the last 20 years plus of personal commercial Wasabi growing. This has been hands on, getting wet and dirty work – not guesswork from behind a desk.