Reflecting on Fresh Summit

My first Fresh Summit experience was in 2008 in Orlando, Fla. — I had graduated from college five months before, joined The Packer’s staff six weeks before, and spent my 21st birthday, three weeks before, working on our annual Fresh Summit preview. 

I had a good basic working knowledge of how fruits and vegetables were grown, thanks to my dad, an eager disciple of organic grower Eliot Coleman, but my idea of getting adventurous with produce was ordering green bell pepper slices on a Subway sandwich. 

I knew that tomatoes were botanically a fruit — but I thought avocados were a vegetable. I was familiar with kale and liked it, because we grew it in our backyard garden, but I refused to eat Brussels sprouts. I thought I knew a lot about the industry I’d just stumbled into — I mean, fruits and vegetables, right? How much is there to know? — but I soon found the world of fresh produce was far bigger, and more fascinating, than I’d bargained for.

I remember walking around the expo floor in a daze, passing displays of perfect, shiny red apples only slightly smaller than my face or arrays of wild-looking mushrooms I’d never heard of before. 

I saw brands like Dole and Sunkist that I recognized from the grocery store and felt as though I’d just sighted a celebrity in “real life.” (I was also slightly disappointed to learn that Edible Software, a company on my list of booths to visit, did not make software that was edible.)

In the education sessions I learned that I was something called a “millennial,” and that my fellow “Gen Y’ers” and I were upending the business world and causing conflict with other generations whose approaches to work were different than our own. (Sorry about that, colleagues.)

And then I got to write a story about the winner of The Packer’s 2008 Global Produce Marketer of the Year award, chief operating officer of Food Lion LLC and Produce Traceability Initiative Steering Committee chairwoman Cathy Green.

Bryan Silbermann, then Produce Marketing Association president and CEO, praised Green for her work on PTI.

“This groundbreaking work required the guidance and steady hand of a real leader,” Silbermann said in his state of the industry speech. “And while I’d heard great comments from her colleagues, I hadn’t experienced ‘The Green Effect’ until I saw for myself how Cathy focused the committee on the task at hand.” 

Today we know her as Cathy Burns, Produce Marketing Association CEO.

The fresh produce industry, the world, The Packer and I myself have changed a lot in the past 13 years (I now love Brussels sprouts). And although this year’s Fresh Summit in New Orleans was cancelled, after complications from hurricane damage, PMA and the United Fresh Produce Association are about to write a new chapter of produce history as the associations come together to form one new organization.

Burns and United Fresh CEO Tom Stenzel have given us a look ahead at the progress on that new group, and outgoing PMA chairman Dwight Ferguson of the California Agricultural Leadership Foundation reflects on his year in that role and the unique challenges and opportunities it brought.

We’ve also curated some highlights from The Packer’s archives of the past decade of Fresh Summit events. Many of the themes will feel familiar — food safety, innovation, how to grow consumption, merger talks, hurricanes — and we hope that this look back at where the produce industry has come from will inspire ideas about where it can go in the future.

So here’s to the next 10 years — whatever Fresh Summit may be called and whatever form it takes. 

Amelia Freidline is The Packer’s copy & design editor.

2011 - Fresh Summit’s worth the trip, exhibitors say

2012 -  Storm hurries strong Fresh Summit

2013 - Lessons learned from PMA: ADD version

2014 -  Show achieves new record, extends reach

2015 -  PMA sees payoff in incremental efforts to build demand

2016 -  Fresh Summit draws big East Coast crowd

2017 -  New vision cast at New Orleans Fresh Summit

2018 -  PMA registers another successful Fresh Summit

2019 -  Fresh Summit breaks attendance record

2020 -  Cathy Burns: Create extraordinary produce future

PMA, United Fresh leaders preview new association

What PMA’s last chairman thinks about 2020, 2021, 2022

2011 Fresh Summit flashback bonus — PMA, United Fresh discuss merger

2013 Fresh Summit flashback bonus — Bold vision for cooperation