A new year means new targets, both for Pine Island Cranberry as a whole and for our team members personally. As GM Fred Torres said last year, “You have to have deadlines. If you set targets, and you stick to them, it makes people more organized and focused. If you don’t set targets, you don’t get stuff done.” While meeting targets can be challenging, it keeps our team moving forward and achieving their goals.

“The top target, without exception, is our mission statement,” says Fred. “The rest is everything we do to reach that goal.” In practice, this means analyzing the 2013 harvest for ways to keep improving and fix anything that might have gone wrong. “What we always need to remember is that we’re growers,” says Fred. “The number one goal is always the crop. To hit the number we want this year, we need to grow more acres and more barrels per acre.” And as general manager, Fred has a lot to oversee to help Pine Island reach that goal. “The acreage we have to sand has to be done, and it will be done, by the second week of March. This time of year can be tough; you can set a target but you never know what the weather is going to be. So you have to have a plan and then make a back-up plan.” Other goals include crowning dams as well as the nineteen acres we’re renovating on the home farm. “Those will be planted in the fall,” Fred says. “Not doing spring planting this year is going to help with targets for sanding as well as getting the sprinklers in so we’ll be ready for frost. That’ll be a huge help.” He would also like to have the team do some more equipment training; his target there is improving the operators we already have and training two more team members to be able to run equipment by the summer.

And that’s not even getting into the plans he’s making for this year’s harvest. “We’re going to have Sim Place and a couple other spots on the home farm ready to haul with tractor trailers before the beginning of the season; we’d like to haul all of Panama with tractor trailers this coming year. Even though it’s January we’re getting the wheels turning and getting ready for harvest again come fall. You always want to hit a home run. That’s how we got to where we are: taking big steps.”

PIICM Manager Cristina Tassone has similar goals for the 2014 harvest. “At the end of the 2013 season we decided to hold a series of crop review meetings to cover several different aspects of the harvest,” she says. “These are helping us make better plans, especially since everyone is in attendance and can hear it all at once. Communication is key; if everyone is on the same page, it makes things run much more smoothly.” Then once we’re done the reviews and have the plans made, when the water comes off the ICM team is ready to go. “It’s better to be able to act instead of react,” Cristina says. “With the weather we’ve seen over the past couple of years, we need to be prepared for anything. So we’re working on water management and soil moisture, trying to improve that process with new production as well as with established beds.”

That’s where supervisor Jeremy Fenstermaker comes in. “I’m getting a handle on our irrigations systems: what’s running the right way and what’s not, as well as how it affects the crop,” he says. “We’re improving the process for installing irrigation and drainpipe, starting with the renovation at 11 Acre and Benny’s. Last year we did some work to find out what’s not operating the way it should be, diagnosing any issues and then making it right. It all starts with the new beds; if we get stuff right from the very beginning, shouldn’t have to have to worry about it again.”

In agriculture, just like any other business, setting targets is necessary. On the farm, things have to get done when it’s time to do them, and that’s all there is to it. And our team is always there to help us do whatever it takes to get those things done.