Family farm uses
success to
help others
PHO TOALTO AGENC Y/JUPI TER IMAGES
Leading by serving
By Stephanie E. Ponder
GROWING UP ON a farm in Yakima,
Washington, 15-year-old Ralph Broetje had
a dream: to have his own apple orchard
and to help starving children in India. And
like a lot of dreams, it faded … but it
didn’t die. It simply lay dormant until it
sprouted more than 20 years later.
Today Costco supplier Broetje (pro-
nounced Bro-chee) and his wife, Cheryl,
farm around 6,000 acres (including a
few hundred organic acres) in south-
east Washington, where they grow
apples and cherries.
Their path to success included
a few false starts, but by turning to
their faith and the servant-leadership model of business (see
sidebar), the couple created an
$80 million business that packs
around 5 million boxes of apples a
year. (Cherries are packed elsewhere.)
Most of their fruit is packed under the
label FirstFruits of Washington. The name
comes from a Biblical passage in which God
asks people to bring Him the first fruits of
their harvest. True to the name, the Broetjes
donate up to 75 percent of their annual earnings to needy groups around the world.
And while they work hard for a successful
harvest, they are also dedicated to cultivating
their employees. The result is a quadruple bottom line: profit, people, planet and purpose.
“We’re interested in bearing fruit that will
last,” Broetje tells The Connection. “We’re
working on the production of fruit and how
it’s doing in terms of people. It’s our work, call
and passion all in one.”
An idea takes root
Ralph and Cheryl both come from farming families in Washington, so it’s little surprise
that shortly after they married in November
1967 they bought a few acres of cherries about
an hour away from their Yakima home.
After seasons of bad weather, their crops
and business thrived throughout the 1970s, and
Broetje purchased more and more land. “I kind
of lost track of why I was farming,” he says.
And then came the 1980s. Between high
interest rates and their bank’s refusal to lend
WHEN ASKED ABOUT their individual
strengths, both Ralph and Cheryl Broetje
hesitate before replying. Ralph finally says
that he’s “good at planting trees,” and
Cheryl says, “I’m into social justice.”
The Broetjes took those strengths
and combined them with Robert
Greenleaf’s servant-leadership approach
(
www.greenleaf.org) to define the
family’s business model.
In the 1970 essay “The Servant as
Leader,” Greenleaf wrote, “The servant-leader is servant first.… It begins with the
natural feeling that one wants to serve, to
serve first. Then conscious choice brings
one to aspire to lead.”
The basic tenets of servant leadership call for leaders to
Devote themselves to serving the
needs of organization members
Focus on meeting the needs of
those they lead
Facilitate personal growth in all
who work with them
Listen and build a sense of community
While Greenleaf created his model for
the business world, the Broetjes recognize
how it fits in with their Christian faith.
Cheryl says they’ve always gone to
church, and she realizes that businesspeople “haven’t always been thought of
as the best Christians.”
Greenleaf also put forth the idea that
people can lead from a for-profit business.
“We believe we’re marketplace ministers,” Cheryl adds, surprising herself
with this new definition of their roles as
servant leaders.
“We thought, ‘We are our own business now, so we can do some stuff.’ If
we’re not willing to see business as a
possibility for helping, we’re missing an
opportunity.”—SEP
