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Jill Dutton

Jill Dutton, associate editor of The Packer, specializes in retail produce news, market trends and urban farming initiatives. With expertise in the rapidly evolving e-grocery landscape, she provides analysis on how digital platforms are reshaping food distribution. Jill is a prominent voice on sustainability and consumer trends, offering actionable insights that help businesses navigate shifting market demands. Her work explores the full produce journey — from farm to retail — featuring grower profiles, supply chain insights and emerging production models that shape American food systems.

Latest Stories
Frustrated shoppers took to social media to call out the grocery retailer after waiting in digital checkout lines for up to 45 minutes, only to find out the highly anticipated free boxes had vanished in seconds.
By shifting raw honeycomb into the fresh produce section, retailers can build a high-margin category that injects new revenue directly to domestic beekeepers currently being pushed out of business by fraudulent liquid honey imports.
According to a new Logile survey, retail grocers can unlock a powerful competitive advantage and secure customer loyalty by prioritizing excellent, well-stocked produce departments over aggressive price discounting.
A new Instacart report mapping multiyear grocery purchase data shows that while high-profile favorites like corn and stone fruit trigger hyperspecific seasonal spikes, year-round staples like limes quietly drive summer produce volumes.
As agentic commerce shifts online grocery from rigid, transactional search bars to intuitive, conversational AI, retailers have an opportunity to use autonomous agents to solve the industry’s long-standing fresh produce adoption bottleneck.
While AI-driven demand forecasting has prevented millions of pounds of waste and boosted retail profits, its full potential is restricted by store managers who override technological insights to avoid the risk of empty shelves.
An unseasonably warm winter in the Southwest desert has accelerated a destructive whitefly virus outbreak, cutting yields by up to 40% and forcing major shippers into a temporary, near-total two-week supply blackout before northern crops recover.
Deerpoint Group’s new CEO, Mike Hemman, explains how shifting from siloed, batch-style fertilizer applications to an integrated, fully managed system is the key to surviving today’s unpredictable agricultural market.
Despite ongoing economic pressures, fresh produce continues to post healthy growth as consumers cook more meals at home. Even so, recent data shows increasingly selective shopping habits that could challenge future volume growth.
Fam Stumabo’s Paul Krechel breaks down how modern cutting technology eliminates “invisible” waste, simplifies labor challenges and proves that true sustainability happens on the factory floor.