SunSelect siblings bring hi-tech production to Cummings Valley

Four entrepreneurial Canadian siblings looked for two and a half years to find the right location for their U.S. greenhouse operation.

They found it in Cummings Valley in 2013.

"My brother was traveling from the coast to Palm Desert when he had lunch at Kohnen's," Edith Gubiotti told Forde Files during a recent tour of the plant. "He thought, 'This looks like a farming community.'"

The conditions, she said, turned out to be perfect – proximity to customers, available labor force and ideal levels of light.

"The more light, the more production," she said. "The Tehachapi growing climate is fantastic."

Within a year, the siblings built a 32-acre greenhouse and have just completed a second greenhouse of the same size. The first greenhouse produces cocktail-size and on-the-vine tomatoes, the second produces sweet bell peppers. The process includes packing and distribution.

With the exception of the glass, the state-of-the-art technology and machinery are from The Netherlands.

All four siblings are in their 40s. Gubiotti is vice president of human resources and administration for the Aldergrove, British Columbia-based company, SunSelect Produce, Inc. Her brother Reinhold Krahn is CEO. Her brother Victor Krahn is vice president of projects. Youngest brother Len Krahn is vice president of operations. A fifth sibling, Esther, is not an officer in the company.

Among them, the five siblings have 23 children, Gubiotti said.

The siblings take turns coming from British Columbia to oversee the Cummings Valley greenhouse and they have become a presence in the community. SunSelect was a principal sponsor of the Aug. 8 Cheers to Charity event.

They grew up picking raspberries on their father's open-field farm in British Columbia.

The family's farming roots go back to Europe, where the chaos of two World Wars ripped apart the lives of their grandparents.

Her grandfather, Gubiotti said, was a German citizen living in the Ukraine. As a Mennonite and a conscientious objector, he ran afoul of the German regime during WW II and was sent to a concentration camp, where he died. As a refugee, her grandmother fled for her life to a Mennonite community in Paraguay. Gubiotti's father Gerhard Krahn was six years old. His family homesteaded there, growing peanuts and cotton. Gubiotti's mother's Mennonite family had fled Europe for Paraguay after the First World War. Her mother was born in Paraguay.

Gerhard Krahn's family moved to Canada, where he studied mathematics and physics at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He preferred working for himself, and so returned to farming in British Columbia.

"There was beauty and opportunity on the west coast," Gubiotti said.

"He's very proud of this facility," she said. "He's a forward-thinker. He wants investments to grow. He gave us support. We're all just farmers. We like to be in the work, directing, managing, hands on."

The family has 70 acres of greenhouses near Vancouver, where they grow sweet bell peppers and seedless cucumbers.

Their Ultra-Clima® greenhouse is a temperature-controlled closed system, allowing no interaction with air from the outside. There are computer-controlled relief windows, Gubiotti said, to relieve pressure, and two levels of shading. The plants are grown in cocoanut fiber root bags from Sri Lanka and drip-watered. All water the plant does not use is recycled. Robotic trains carry filled boxes out and – after passing through a disinfecting tunnel – empty boxes in. Visitors must wear booties and paper robes to prevent unwanted intrusion by unfriendly bugs.

Gubiotti said she likes to snack on the tomatoes as she makes her way through what she calls the "controlled jungle." The newer building, empty on the day of the tour, would be soon filled with baby pepper plants being carried by refrigerated truck from Canada.

"It's so much fun when it's new," she said.