PMA and United Fresh are on the fast track now for the January merger

As the industry waits for the new “normal” in the world and in the fresh produce business, one can’t but help wonder about the soon-coming merger of the Produce Marketing Association and the United Fresh Produce Association.

We trust more details on the merger are coming soon, but the cancellation of Fresh Summit has put the precise timing of the big reveal in limbo.

I posed this question to the LinkedIn Fresh Produce Industry Discussion Group:

From your perspective, what is the hardest part of bringing together PMA and United Fresh in a newly combined association? What makes you most excited when it happens in January 2022?

Here are a few comments on the question:

• The MSO or Mission Successor Organization that will arise in January ....of all the activities, I think the Washington Advocacy part will be the most challenging. Produce is about 50-50 import and domestic and I assume the board will have a robust foreign presence - so what will advocacy look like? Advocate for Americans, exporters, importers, foreigners? Some or all or none? We have food waste because we produce surplus food...would the MSO lobby for climate subsidies to not plant food crops while 9 of 10 Americans don’t eat enough produce? Can the organic -soil regeneration crowd coexist and play nice with the CEA - soil is irrelevant & open field agriculture in the dirt is gross crowd? The most exciting part is the sectional programs or events that may merge or existing ones that may get better. I’m not interested in floral (other than taking expo leftovers to my wife) but other are and they deserve a robust service. Will the marketing part of the PMA Food Service event and the operation part that United Fresh took under its wing from the old Fresh-Cut Produce Assn. merge or stay separate.? PMA has marketing in its title but has drifted into the operations part of production agriculture. Good or not?
• Although PMA for sure does a large effort to involve the international fresh produce industry, we think there is truly an opportunity to leverage the association to the global scene. Will the combined association have the strength to do so?
• I think that the combined organization will be able to use all the resources of both to have much more of a public and government impact. It will speak with more authority since it will represent a much larger audience. In the public/private space, size is often directly correlated with attention.

TK: I believe there should be strong confidence that PMA and United Fresh leaders will make the new association work to serve the needs of the industry. How that will look when the new board is seated around the table in January 2022 still isn’t crystal clear. Not just yet, anyway.