When people first discover Pines, they often come for the wheatgrass. Over time, many stay because they realize the product is connected to a much bigger story. This year marks 50 years since Pines was founded in 1976, but the values behind the company go back even further: to the wheatgrass research begun in the 1930s and to the belief that food should support both human health and the health of the land.
From the beginning, Pines was built around more than profit. Our founders and early investors believed a company could be rooted in organic farming, environmental responsibility, and service. According to archived Pines materials, many of those original supporters invested small amounts because they believed in the mission itself, including organic agriculture, sustainable communities, and helping feed the hungry.
That mission still matters. Pines has long emphasized being a 100 percent organic grower rather than participating in dual farming, and the company has tied its identity to avoiding chemical poisons, protecting soil quality, and resisting the depletion of fragile water resources like the Ogallala Aquifer. The archived materials also describe contributions to environmental and hunger-related causes, additional acreage converted to organic farming, and a long-standing effort to connect greens to a broader philosophy of stewardship.
For us, Memorial Day is an appropriate time to talk about service in a wider sense. It is a day of remembrance, but it is also a reminder that values mean more when they are lived out over time. In the world of food and farming, service can look like building soils instead of exhausting them, choosing glass over cheap plastic, growing with the future in mind, and supporting communities beyond your own immediate bottom line.
That is one reason Pines has always felt different from trend-based wellness brands. The product is part of the message, but not the whole message. How it is grown matters. What kind of agriculture it supports matters. What kind of business it tries to be matters. In a category full of noise, those things still count.
Our wheatgrass is grown in glacial soil with rainfall rather than irrigation, harvested at peak nutrition, and packaged in oxygen-free amber glass to protect quality. Those are product decisions, but they are also value decisions. They reflect a belief that quality, sustainability, and integrity belong together.
Over the years, Pines has spoken openly about organic standards, environmental protection, and the idea that greens should be genuinely worth preserving. That perspective may sound old-fashioned in an era of fast branding, but we are comfortable with that. Fifty years in, we still believe that doing the right thing slowly can outlast doing the easy thing quickly.
So as we mark this month’s history theme, we want to say clearly what Pines stands for: real greens, responsibly grown, by a company that has tried to stay loyal to its mission. If you choose Pines, you are not just choosing a greener product: you are also supporting a longer view of what health, farming, and business can look like when they are asked to serve more than themselves.
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