‘Reminder of our journey’: Kelowna’s Farming Karma wins provincial award for sustainability

For the second consecutive year, Binny Boparai-Gill and Avi Gill have returned to Kelowna from the BC Food and Beverage Awards with hardware.

In 2022, their business Farming Karma Fruit Company won silver in the Product of the Year category for their pear soda.

This year, Farming Karma was given the Circularity Award, one that the husband-and-wife team proudly and fittingly accepted alongside their daughter.

The award is given annually to a company that demonstrates a strong commitment to circularity and sustainability by minimizing waste generation and promoting reuse, repair and recycling.

Boparai-Gill tells KelownaNow that Farming Karma has a strong commitment to sustainable practices.

That includes energy-efficient equipment, minimal water usage and no plastic packaging, as well as giving the materials left over from the juicing process to cattle.

It’s all part of the company’s “Good Karma - Do Good Initiative,” he explains.

"The award is a reminder of our journey and the extra steps we take to ensure we create our products responsibly,” Boparai-Gill noted.

“Our core values are to create good, healthy, clean products in the most sustainable way possible. To be recognized for our efforts means a lot to us."

Farming Karma is a family business through and through, with the name originally coming from Karma Gill, who has been growing apples in the Okanagan alongside his wife Kuku for over 30 years.

Avi is one of the couple’s three children and she, alongside her husband, took her parents high-quality fruit and desire to do more in the community to create the popular fruit soda brand.

“With a hope of sparking the interest of the next generation of agricultural pioneers, they began the creation of healthy, value-added fruit products,” explains the Farming Karma website.

To learn more about Farming Karma’s initiatives and their award-winning product, click this link.