Doing good: Dr. Bronner's goes beyond organic

The famous soap company led the way in setting new certification standards for regenerative farming

This installment of Doing Good dips into our archives, this time from the fall of 2023, when this profile of David Bronner and Dr. Bronner’s was originally published in Edible San Diego.

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Anyone who has taken the time and endured the eyestrain of reading the 0.2 type on a Dr. Bronner’s label knows that the soap manufacturer promotes the goodness and unity of humanity. That commitment has now made the Vista-based company a worldwide leader, setting new standards in regenerative agricultural.

In 2005, David Bronner, CEO and grandson of the original Dr. Bronner, realized that to adhere to his company’s core principles, they needed to go beyond the organic certification that they had earned two years earlier. “The problem with organic as a standard is it's more about what you shouldn't do and not what you should do,” Bronner says. Organic certification bans synthetic fertilizer and pesticides, yet gives no direction on maintaining soil fertility or sequestering carbon.

The family-owned company reached out to the Rodale Institute, a leader in organic farming, to develop the most advanced and comprehensive standard for regenerative farming. Patagonia, the clothier known for its corporate consciousness, and other organizations also got on board. In its simplest terms, regenerative farming recognizes that soil is more than just dirt; microorganisms, fungi, worms, and other organisms create a holistic living system that retains water and increases crop yield while sequestering carbon in the soil. The new standard, Regenerative Organic Certified, was launched in 2018.

Dr. Bronner’s promotes intercropping, the cultivation of two or more crops simultaneously. Crops are also rotated through annual cycles, including noncash cover crops that are grown because they put nutrients into the soil. In many cases, Dr. Bronner’s is the majority owner of a farm or the largest customer, which helps it enforce its standards.

The original “Dr.” Bronner originally made soap in Germany

In places like Ghana, the soap-making company (and now chocolate making!) supports dynamic agroforestry. Crops such as cocoa and oil palm are densely cultivated along with bananas and papayas. “You've got different canopy heights of complementary tree species. It’s like a wild ecosystem. You have tall trees, mid level trees, bushes and ground cover,” says Bronner. “That maximizes photosynthetic capture and biomass yield and minimizes weed and pest pressure.”

Coconut, palm oil, mint and other raw materials come from countries as diverse as Ivory Coast, Madagascar, and India. As conditions in each country and each crop differ, the new certification sets no exact farming rules. “What we are mandating is that your soil health needs to be increasing year to year,” Bronner says, “that five years later a farm can show measurable improvement in its soil quality.”

Moving Beyond the Soil

To develop animal husbandry standards, Dr. Bronner’s worked with Compassionate World Farming, an organization that advocates for more humane treatment of farm animals. Bronner says, “We want no confined factory farms, no confined systems. It all has to be pasture based, where the animal lives a good life and fulfills instinctual behaviors.” He also realized organic certification gave little visibility into conditions for farmers, workers, and their communities. Nothing in the certification covered wages or working conditions. Developed with the Fair World Project, the regenerative certification bans child or forced labor. It mandates living wages and bans sexual harassment. Farmers must receive a fair price for their crops, and food processing must be done in a facility that pays good wages.

Bronner encourages other businesses to follow their lead and adopt responsible practices. “Companies that make a like-minded choice, you'll increase your costs somewhat, but you're doing a responsible ecological thing,” he says. “Doing the right thing can be very lucrative. We're an economically thriving and growing business. There are increasing numbers of consumers that want to be assured that the people involved in making their products and growing their food were not shafted and weren't exploited.”

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And a brief view of the original “Dr.” Bronner.