Although puzzled, Frederick had heard of air shipping before.
“Overseas shipping… I’ve heard of it. They say some farms in Washington State are selling through air freight. But I heard it doesn’t make much profit?”
At the end of 2007, California’s cherry distribution market stood at a massive turning point. The traditional cherry industry relied on two pillars: sea transport and big-box supermarkets.
Harvested cherries were loaded onto enormous container ships and crossed the ocean over fifteen days to a month, while consumers had to pay high prices for fruit that had barely retained its shape thanks to refrigeration technology, but whose aroma and flesh had already faded.
But in the mid-2000s, seeing the tremendous demand in the Japanese market, some large farms in Washington State and California had begun small-scale trial operations, though the scale was not very large.
“That’s right. The fundamental reason some farms haven’t made much profit despite using air shipping is because of the field heat cherries carry. They go to all the trouble of loading cherries and sending them by air, but when the boxes are opened after arrival, they’re often moldy from heat and moisture, or the flesh has softened as if it had been boiled. So the risk is high.
From the farm’s perspective, paying enormous air freight fees only to deliver garbage becomes no different from gambling, so they haven’t been able to expand the scale of air shipping.”
The moment a cherry is picked from the tree, it begins to respire rapidly in order to survive. More precisely, it is a process of burning the sugars and acids stored inside to create energy, and the energy produced at that time is released in the form of heat. This is called Field Heat.
The reason cherries are difficult to store lies in the fact that for every 10°C rise in temperature, the respiration rate of cherries increases two to threefold. In other words, cherries left under California’s scorching sun burn themselves away and enter the senescence stage in an instant.
At this point, the heat inside the fruit pushes moisture out through the skin and stem, and that is why the green stem becomes the very first standard for judging the freshness of cherries. If the heat is not cooled quickly, cherry stems turn from green to brown within a few hours.
“And yet you’re suggesting air shipping. There must be a reason?”
“That’s right. There’s a technology called Hydro-Cooling. It’s a method where cold ice water between 0 and 2°C is poured directly over the cherries—the shower method—or the cherries are immersed in a cold-water tank—the immersion method. If you do that, you can lower the temperature of cherries that were close to 30°C immediately after harvest down to 2°C within 30 to 60 minutes.”
“Something like that… exists?”
“Yes. This puts the cherries into a kind of suspended state and forcibly stops their aging, allowing them to maintain freshness even through long-distance shipping.”
At the astonishing explanation, Frederick’s mouth fell open.
“If that really works, then even with overseas air shipping, we could prevent the quality of the cherries from dropping.”
“One more technology is needed on top of that.”
“Hm? Other than technology to keep cherries fresh, we need something else?”
“Yes. An airplane’s cargo hold has low air pressure and unstable temperatures. It’s MAP—Modified Atmosphere Packaging—technology, which artificially changes the gas composition inside the packaging film to keep the cherries, put to sleep by hydro-cooling, in that same state until they reach their destination.”
When oxygen is low and carbon dioxide is high, cherries drastically slow their respiration rate in order to survive. It is as if a snake is hibernating, using almost no energy.
MAP packaging technology, which uses this principle, lowers the oxygen concentration and raises the carbon dioxide concentration to around 5 to 15 percent before sealing the package. When combined with hydro-cooling technology, it becomes possible to eat cherries freshly picked from a farm in Japan or Korea.
“Ah… I see.”
“In places like Japan or Korea, even if the price is somewhat high, there is a strong desire for high-quality cherries. Even Bing cherries, which are slightly lower in quality than Royal Tioga, could probably be sold for a much higher price than they are now.”
“Ah… if that happens…?”
“You thought that if you couldn’t sell cherries in bulk to high-end markets right now, there would be no sales channel. But honestly, I don’t think there’s no way to survive even if that doesn’t work out. If you open overseas sales channels with this technology, you’ll probably be able to send more than half of next year’s cherry shipment by air.”
Frederick nodded with a moved expression.
“That makes sense. It really does. Then what should we do now?”
“There’s a best way to officially show that Harris Farm has secured high-level technology. We use UC Davis.”
“Chloe’s school?”
“Yes. UC Davis is one of the world’s top agricultural research institutions. They have a place called the Postharvest Technology Center. We invite an expert from there and receive consulting.”
“Not from you, but from an expert at UC Davis?”
“Yes. Once we receive consulting from an expert, that itself becomes a powerful quality certificate. UC Davis will also handle all the necessary paperwork.”
Chloe, who had been listening, cut in.
“I think I can look into an expert on that side.”
“Exactly.”
I held Chloe’s hand tightly, met her eyes, smiled, and continued.
“Then, after acquiring the specialized technology through the school, you can rent equipment from a company like Cascade Cooling and receive training.”
“Ah… damn, that’ll cost money again.”
“If you’re short, Redwood can lend it to you.”
Whether those words moved him again, Frederick looked at me with eyes like a cow’s.
“To have such a reliable business partner… I’m truly grateful.”
“And for MAP packaging, since it requires proprietary technology for special films, you’ll have to sign a technical support contract with a company. That won’t be a problem either since you can learn it, but…”
I looked at Chloe, whose hand I was holding tightly.
“That means you’ll have to learn all of it… Can you do it?”
Until now, I had been speaking entirely with Frederick, but strictly speaking, Frederick was helping Chloe, and the one who had to be in charge of all the work was Chloe herself. Chloe had already been designated as the successor to the cherry farm. If that was violated, Brandon would immediately object.
So the person learning from the UC Davis expert would be Chloe, and the person receiving equipment training afterward would also have to be Chloe. But since she also had to pay attention to the pear farm, even two bodies would not be enough.
But Chloe straightened her back as if to ask what I was even talking about and raised her voice.
“Of course I can! It’s my farm. I can do it well enough. You know I learned a lot about pear farming from you.”
“I do…”
Feeling proud of her, I stroked her hair. Then, realizing that it wasn’t just the two of us here, I cleared my throat and changed the subject.
“Ahem. Anyway, if we do that… I think it should work?”
“…… Th-then let’s do that.”
The atmosphere grew slightly awkward, but before long we were able to end the conversation on a warm note. And since I was there anyway, I enjoyed a date with Chloe all the way through dinner.
William Hartford sat sunk deep into a lounge sofa at Dare Ridge Country Club, quietly staring at the golf course visible far outside the window. Beside him, major association members such as Samuel Reed and Thomas Cromwell fidgeted anxiously with their whiskey glasses.
A week had passed since he sent the letter, and the picture Hartford had expected was clear. Frederick should have come running, pale-faced, and fallen to his knees, or else worn down the threshold of every bank in the area. At the very least, he should have been running around borrowing money from association members he knew and causing an uproar in order to calm the situation, but Harris Farm was unbelievably peaceful.
No, it was not merely peaceful—it was full of energy.
“William, something’s strange. That fellow Frederick, I heard he drove a truck all the way to San Francisco with his son yesterday. Isn’t he far too relaxed for a man on the verge of bankruptcy?”
At Samuel’s words, deep furrows formed between Hartford’s brows.
“It’s a bluff. The deadline to repay two million dollars is only a fortnight away, and there isn’t a single bank around here where he can find that money. I’ve already pulled every string.”
Hartford was confident in his net. But that confidence began to crack the moment the hurried footsteps of the association secretary arrived.
“Chairman! News just came in from Harris Farm!”
“What is it? Did they finally say they’re filing for bankruptcy?”
The secretary wiped his sweat and shook his head.
“No. Frederick… no, Chloe of Harris Farm has invited Professor Edward from the UC Davis Postharvest Technology Center as an advisor. Right now, there are three hydro-cooler trailers sent by Cascade Cooling in the farm warehouse.”
“A professor? Hydro-cooler? What’s that?”
“…They say it’s a machine that rapidly refrigerates produce…”
“They’re rapidly refrigerating cherries?”
With nothing more to say, the secretary relayed other news instead of talking about the trailers. This was the most important and urgent news.
“That’s not all. Frederick has applied for individual farm direct-delivery approval with Whole Foods Market and Gelson’s headquarters… and this morning, it was suddenly approved!”
“What? That can’t be possible! Their rules don’t even open the inbound system without an association certificate!”
At the unbelievable news, Thomas Cromwell shouted as if screaming. With a deathly pale face, the secretary continued.
“That’s… instead of an association certificate, they submitted a UC Davis technical verification report and Redwood’s quality assurance data. I called and checked myself, and they said the data had high credibility.
Especially because they were cherries cultivated with support from Redwood Winery, and because they would become ingredients for Ruby Quartz and Cerisia, they said there was no reason to reject them. In fact, they said they would pay an even higher premium than for existing cherries…”
The air in the lounge froze in an instant. The authority of the association William Hartford had dominated crumpled like paper before the new weapons of data and the Redwood brand.
But the shock did not end there. William Hartford’s secretary hurried in holding a single document.
“Chairman, the main bank contacted us. They said Harris Farm has stated there will be no problem repaying the full two million dollars of the association collateral loan by the end of the year.”
“The full amount… can be repaid? By the end of the year?”
The whiskey glass slipped from William’s hand and fell onto the carpet. The liquor spread with a dull sound, but no one paid any attention.
“They say they plan to secure funds using the purchase order they signed with Whole Foods as collateral. There’s word that they’ve submitted the documents to Wells Fargo, Redwood’s main bank, as the lender.”
If it was not Harris Farm alone, but backed by Redwood, whose annual sales approached ten million dollars, then a two-million-dollar loan clearly would not be very difficult. And if the purchase order was added as collateral on top of that, then the issue would be how high the interest was, not whether approval was possible.
“Damn it… Redwood…”
He realized that the problem had arisen because he had thought far too lightly of the strategic partnership with the winery called Redwood.
William Hartford sank back onto the sofa in hollow defeat. He felt as if every trick he had used to bury Frederick had instead become a stepping stone that freed Frederick from the association and turned him into an independent magnate.
“Then what about the Costco and Walmart quotas…?”
Samuel’s face looked as though he were a child whose toy had been taken from his hands.
“How should I know!”
And William Hartford snapped at the association member he had been coaxing and appeasing all this time. This was no time to worry about the association members.