ORLANDO, Fla. — When Ashley Rawl, vice president of sales, marketing and product development at WP Rawl, was asked to describe the headwinds facing the fresh produce industry, he used the analogy of a shop vise, where the farmer is in the middle between market volatility and government regulation.
“On one side, we have volatility — whether it’s the weather, disease pressure, labor or H-2A; we really have no control over our input cost and not to mention the land values currently that farmers are grappling with,” he says. “Then on the other side, we have the rigidity of specs — the audits are for multiple different reasons … and then government regulation. Then we have the farmers that are in the middle trying to let this country eat for the lowest price in the world.”
Rawl was a panelist at the Southeast Produce Council’s 2026 Southern Exposure event. Moderated by Robby Cruz, vice president of produce and floral for Target, the panel also featured Steve Church, chairman of Church Brothers Farms, and Sarah Frey, founder and CEO of Frey Farms.
Headwinds Abound
Church says that while water, labor and food safety are perennial challenges and concerns for growers, a major up-and-coming threat is that the fresh produce industry is short about 80,000 drivers.
“That could be a problem that comes down the road here in the next year,” he says.
Frey says that while water issues often mean availability in the West, for her operation that is east of the Mississippi, she sees a potential clash with water usage for massive data centers needing to power and cool the servers for artificial intelligence. Frey says the agriculture industry needs to pay attention to the future implications of AI and water on farming businesses.
She says when her family started farming in southern Indiana, a permit wasn’t needed to drill a well. Frey says it was common to hit free-flowing water at 60 to 80 feet. Now the state is courting AI data centers, and that’s changing the conversation about water regulation.
“I think many in California are probably sitting back thinking, ‘OK, all right, and now it’s your turn to go through what we’ve been through,’” she says. “We share a lot of the same challenges.”
Death of the Open Market
Church also says disease pressure has been a major challenge for growers. He points to impatiens necrotic spot virus, which decimated about 30% of the lettuce crop in 2022. INSV once again hit Salinas, Calif. Then heavy rains put a lot of leafy greens underwater, which were unusable due to Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement rules. He says he’s optimistic that future research will help develop disease-resistant varieties.
“There are very few places in the world that you can grow good iceberg lettuce,” he says.
Frey says crop equalization is a key focus to ensure her family’s operation can offer retailers full crop utilization.
“One thing that remains sort of a core consistency is that no matter where we’re growing, we’re trying to figure out how we take up more pieces of the value chain,” she says. “How do you do more with less? And then how do you make more of what you have?”
Rawl says his family follows the sun and latitude throughout the season to continue to meet the needs of retailers. His family’s business grades performance weekly against planting plans and the execution.
“It’s almost an engineering process, the planting schedules today,” he says.
Church says it’s been an evolution, where 10 years ago about 50% of produce was grown on contract, but now it’s closer to 80% or 90%.
“It’s almost like you can’t grow more because there’s no more open market,” he says.
A challenge, Church says, to growing on spec is that retailers often don’t understand why a spec might need to change.
“I know Robby said the worst thing is to first hear about that problem when the truck’s in the warehouse,” he says. “There’s certain things that we have to work with the customer. I have two rules of customers: Rule No. 1, the customer is always right. Rule No. 2, if he’s wrong, revert to rule No. 1.”
Working With Retailers
Frey says building partnerships is incredibly important to the future of the fresh produce industry, as is working within the changing, growing season and being flexible.
“A truly great customer is the one that you don’t prorate,” Church says.
Rawl says that flexibility helps increase supply. He says sometimes that could be on sizing or other ways to mitigate any major weather issues.
“I think there’s ways we can back up and be creative, collaborative to get the product on the shelf and still make the farmer and the customers and the retail partner whole,” he says.
Frey says “no two growing seasons are alike,” and that’s where having those relationships with retail partners is key. She says proactive communication with retailers can help highlight if produce is coming in at a different size or spec. She says it’s critical those conversations are unfiltered and honest to work through market gluts and other things that might come up in the course of a growing season.
“The partnerships that we have that are most responsive to the needs for us to make sizing or spec change almost always seem to be the most competitive retailers, because it’s not that you’re just doing your grower partner a favor because they have a different size or a different spec,” she says. “It’s actually helping your bottom line as well … Being able to pivot quickly and work with your grower partner, get a new retail into the system, actually sort of puts you at a great competitive advantage because now you’re not selling the $8 or $9 watermelon. ... Now you might be selling a $5 or a $6 watermelon, and you’re beating your competition.”
Administrative Burdens and the Potential for Technology
Rawl says part of the aforementioned shop vise is the administrative burden of food safety and audits.
“Sustainability is the new food safety,” he says. “It’s another audit. It’s another thing that we have to do to be able to sell our product. And it’s not that we’re not doing it, it’s just that we’re being asked to prove it in five different ways for five different customers.”
Growers are getting squeezed while there is no universal sustainability standard now. One retailer might want carbon sequestration data while another wants water-use efficiency metrics, which means growers must conduct multiple audits.
“Farmers are the original environmentalists,” Rawl says. “If we don’t take care of our land, it’s not going to take care of us.”
Frey says a major challenge with a low-margin commodity is how to return more to the farm and that her family has explored value-added products to offset food waste. She says her family has started to offer watermelon juice for those melons unsuitable for retail. She sees sustainability as being “the right thing to do for the farm, it’s the right thing to do for for consumers and it’s the right thing to do for the planet.”
For Rawl and Church, technology has great potential in the future of farming. Rawl has used laser weeders equipped with AI to run constantly to achieve return on investment. Rawl has also installed real-time data sensors to monitor different parts of the farming operation, which he says has potential when coupled with AI.
“It’s going to be several years, but it’s building out models specific to crops,” he says. “It’s really, really early, but there seems to be some possibilities.”
Church says he’s used AI for forecasting, but a challenge to using AI is it will pick up data from the middle of the global pandemic when those market conditions were atypical.
“I do believe that it’s it is the future and I think that’s why we need a lot of young people who are trying to come in and work with AI,” he says. “Data is king. The more you know about data, the better off you’re going to be. And optical sorts inside of our processing plants, you know, that’s driven by AI. If you have any issues, really learn a lot from that.”
Future of Farming
In the end, Frey says that while there are significant headwinds in the industry, strong partnerships will be key with retail partners.
“We have some challenges, not just here today that we’re dealing with tactically, but we will have some challenges in the in the not-so-distant future that we’re going to need our partners to tackle those challenges with us,” she says.
Rawl says it’s important to remember how critical the domestic produce industry is in the U.S.
“A strong domestic food supply is a matter of national security,” he says. “We’re all part of that and this next generation is going to continue to make it better and better.”
