Bonus episode of the podcast — Sweet corn update before 4th of July
Packer Interview - Sweet Corn Update
Bert Barnes, account manager and corn commodity manager for Oviedo, Fla.-based Duda Farm Fresh Foods, provided an update June 29 on how sweet corn supply and quality are looking heading into the Fourth of July weekend.
The Fourth of July holiday is to sweet corn what the Super Bowl is to avocados: the biggest sales event of the season. Normally, retailers love to promote sweet corn in conjunction with Fourth of July, but this year the vegetable won't be featured in ads to the extent it usually is because of supply challenges that have increased prices.
"It's been really tight," Barnes said, noting that weather played a key role.
"To start off the season, it was very, very high temperatures, so it brought the corn crop on 7-9 days early in some cases, in some varieties, then we had unseasonably cool weather, so it kind of pushed everything back, and then we had a rain planting gap across the industry of about five days, so you had a three-week span there where it really caused some problems in the supply chain," Barnes said.
He mentioned that, along with weather contributing to supply challenges, numerous growers around the industry cut back on some their plantings after a depressed market last season due to an abundance of supply coupled with lower demand.
This season, while there is less sweet corn to go around, the quality is excellent.
"It has been fabulous," Barnes said. "And again, the weather ... it always plays into it. We have had excellent quality, probably one of the best in several years, around the table on all three varieties that we provide. It's been great."
You can listen to the full conversation on the player below or check it out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other popular podcast platforms. Scroll down for a list of previous episodes.
Below are a few of our previous episodes:
USDA's Greg Ibach on Farmers to Families Food Box Program — Ibach discusses the feedback USDA has received on the program from food banks and others; the awards process; how many boxes USDA has been billed for by contract award winners so far; how many contracts have been terminated; the USDA's audit and review process for contracts; what the USDA is doing to make the program better ahead of the next round of contracts; and more.
Robinson Fresh's Gina Garven on what consumers want in an online grocery shopping experience — Retailers know what it takes to sell fresh produce effectively in stores, but what does it take to sell fresh produce effectively online? With millions more shoppers introduced to online grocery during the stay-at-home orders issued in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the question is more relevant now than ever.
Comparing notes on United Fresh Live! — Editor-in-chief Tom Karst, retail editor Ashley Nickle and Northeast editor Amy Sowder review all aspects of United Fresh Live!, including what worked well to what didn't work as well, what they heard from exhibitors, their own experiences with the platform, and what pieces of it might be worked into the "new normal" even as in-person trade shows eventually resume.
