I’m on my flight home from Minneapolis where I just spent an amazing two days with the folks from Green Giant. They invited myself and 24 other bloggers to come tour their operation and teach us a few things about the history of the company. One thing I noticed about this company, a ice from the fact they are really a NICE breed of people, they were completely transparent when we barraged them with questions about the product.

When we were waiting for our turn to go through one of the testing plants, Tom our guide answered my question about GMO. People assume there is a lot of GMO activity in agriculture but its just not true. Sweet corn has no GMO at all and most of the population eats sweet corn. Field corn generally isn’t grown for human consumption its mostly grown for Ethanol. When we visited the fields they were mostly corn and soybeans.

I also learned that they are really striving to decrease their carbon footprint with better water practices but also by reducing the use of pesticides by 80%!! That is amazing considering the massive yields they bring in. They are taking the small steps to grow more organically but the yields are,t keeping up enough yet but they are taking cues from the other General Mills brands and researching it.

Our trip consisted of meeting and greeting on a dinner cruise on Lake Minnetonka the first night, which was a lot of fun!It rained like crazy but we stayed dry. It stopped raining when we got off the boat ironically!

We mingled with the execs of marketing and brand integration people from Green Giant where I am sure every group was asked to explain blogging and how THEY could work with us to help the brand and the blogger together. I told one guy that they actually did a brilliant thing choosing the bloggers that they did because we were a mix of food, garden, review and deal bloggers. They can use all 4 sectors to reach a massive market. Someone like myself and and garden bloggers are going to blog about the food itself, the nutrition, the fresh food movement, the review bloggers are going to try the product and give honest feedback and the deal bloggers get massive traffic for posting deals and coupon news so it really was very smart.

Day two started very early as we headed to the valley, starting with photo opps with SPROUT!

Then we took a bus to Le Sueur for a meeting and presentation then plant and seed vault tours which was really neat.We donned out boots and hit the fields to learn more and take notes and we asked a lot of questions, and I saw first hand how the actual breeding process works, its conventional, using bags! Neat stuff!

And we had an AMAZING lunch I will tell you about later but here is just a teaser:

Then we took a hayride to the corn hybrid fields and we actually picked the corn and ate it right off the cob. I had never done that before! It was delicious! We did an actual taste test in the part of the testing facility, learned about how they go through with tastings, and we only had about 5 types to taste, all corn. The people that work there try veggies from 100 different trays sometimes!

After the tasting we headed back on the bus for a quick pit stop to the Le Sueur Museum to check out some old history of the Green Giant company. It was really neat to see the old can’s from long ago with the original label!

Then it was back to the hotel to get ready for dinner, which I am telling you all about in another post! I really enjoyed my trip, the bloggers I met were fantastic and the staff at Marriott Southwest in Minnetonka were top notch. And of course the Green Giant team were so nice. I am glad I went on this trip and got a lot of education about where the veggies I buy come from AND how they are processed and tested.

Stay tuned for part two of this series where I dig deep into the food on this trip, including meeting a James Beard award winning chef…

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Disclosure. All of the words above are my own thoughts and opinions. Green Giant sent me on this visit at their expense, no monetary compensation was exchanged.