Opinion
2018 trade statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture are now available.
If you missed the speech by Bill Walton at The Packer’s West Coast Produce Expo, you missed quite a lot.
This National Agriculture Day, March 20, we honor those who work tirelessly to put the nation’s most popular U.S.-grown fruit into the hands of our families and friends.
Now that big bad Monsanto is gone, will consumers still hold a grudge against genetically-engineered crops and associated tools?
Suggestible you, me and our preschool kids and grandkids.
Western Growers’ president and CEO Tom Nassif recently posted an opinion piece on the Western Growers website, and I am excerpting his blog post with permission from WG.
What are the best ways to spur organic sales at the retail level?
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has issued a “before” shot of food safety practices on the farm, perhaps followed ten years from now with a more flattering “after” shot.
Our digital library of past issues of The Packer goes back to 1993, and that makes recalling the headlines of Fresh Summit expos in the recent past very accessible.
It is one of the ironies of marketing that the healthiest food often isn’t labeled as such at our retail supermarkets.
As the global produce community comes together in Orlando at the Produce Marketing Association’s Fresh Summit, let me rank the top ten reports from the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service this year.
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Kroger executives believe their new OptUp mobile app will change the way America eats, and they might be right.
A sure sign of any significant disruption of the avocado market, as our news editor Chris Koger has said more than once, is a story (or a 1,000 stories) about how Chipotle is coping with the shortage.
Many people watch the Super Bowl for the commercials as much as the game, and I imagine marketers in particular observe with interest the ads that companies pay millions to air.
Truck rates have been easing, but will the polar vortex change all that?
“Now if you could just solve the yam/sweet potato confusion.”
Lower prices for Florida tomatoes and Mexican avocados drove the Produce Price Index (my own creation) down to lower levels in late January, though prices for Idaho potatoes are trending higher.
A few years ago, Larry Danielson — a retired former employee of the Red Book (now Produce Market Guide) — mailed The Packer a slim 89-page paperback book.
Ah, those lovely interruptions — not catastrophes, yet mini crises all the same.
As promised, I said would look at the newly updated per capita availability numbers with an eye toward the under-performing fresh commodities compared with their peers.
Having taken a quick look this morning at the recently updated per capita numbers for fresh vegetables, I am here to tell you the winners and losers.
House Republicans are trying to pass a farm bill and likely must do it without help from the Democrats.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture pulled the plug on the proposed organic marketing board before the drama of a referendum could unfold.
I am still getting some insightful responses to my recent question:
Amazon wants you to buy groceries online, and it seems they will succeed.
I was talking with a Wisconsin potato shipper the other day and he mentioned that he (and others, of course) can’t wait for the day of self-driving, autonomous trucks.
There’s a Chinese proverb: “When planning for a year, sow rice. When planning for a decade, plant trees. When planning for life, train and educate people.”
Anyone who would put needles in strawberries is surely evil, or truly sick.