Inside the two companies that dominate the U.S. carrot crop
Fresh carrots are an expanding $1.4 billion U.S. market, and Americans are expected to consume 100 million pounds this Thanksgiving — roughly five ounces for every human being in the country. At least 60% of those carrots are produced by just two companies, Bolthouse and Grimmway, both of which were acquired by buyout firms, in 2019 and 2020 respectively. … Cartels are less funny for neighbors of the two producers in Southern California’s Cuyama Valley, who are calling for a boycott of Big Carrot over the amount of water their farms are sucking out of the ground. In 2022, Bolthouse and Grimmway together were responsible for 67%, or 9.6 billion gallons, of the area’s total water use. Local residents said they expect their wells to dry up if the carrot farms continue to use as much water as they do …
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