Packer Anniversary

Industry weighs in on changes to come in retailing

Tue, 15 Nov 2022 07:41:24 GMT

The Packer’s 125th-anniversary issue is soon coming, and in a series of blog posts I have described the results of a survey we posted in conjunction with our editorial efforts for the publication.

We have also posted a number of columns contributed by industry leaders about their observations of the industry, along with previously published articles from earlier anniversary issues.

Today, I want to highlight a question from The Packer’s 125th industry survey that asks this:

How will produce retailing change in the next 25 years?

Here are a good many of the responses we received:

The online marketplace is here to stay and fresh produce will be a differentiating factor;
More home delivery, more self service;
Less staffing in the stores;
Technology and digital will change the consumer purchase path;
Trying from the old to the (new) technology but not forgetting where came from;
I think the produce department will always be a place where retailers can set their store apart from the competition. I think retailers will keep finding their marketing plan and will execute on that and whether it is price driven, quality driven or whatever, it will always be with a goal of being the best department in their region;
Large Retailers will finally realize that they can’t sell produce like they sell grocery and that the way to drive stores sales is through the produce departments. Educated produce people, great displays, minimal packaging , value pricing, real sustainability which translates into selling produce with its natural ebbs and flows not a predetermined price. Organics take center stage;
It feels like center store is dying and perishable emphasis will evolve;
Trends, Analysis, and big data will change everything;
No one can predict the future for five years much less 25 years;
We will go back to having produce stands/stores as everything else can be ordered online for home delivery;
Online ordering, home delivery, and the focus everywhere being on reduced labor. Produce sales will continue to grow each year and more and people be having their own back yard “farms” and supporting the neighborhood garden co-ops and local farmers market. It’s all about the perceptions not the reality;
More produce will be grown where it is sold;
I think eventually all produce will be packaged similar to Trader Joe’s;
I expect more retailers to “invest” more in training and development...its the next step in the differentiation evolution. Pricing only gets you so far...how staff are able to relate to consumers inquiries and understanding what they are selling and how to handle it will be paramount to be successful over that time;
Online and delivery will take over, but we in produce need to figure out how we get quality right in this environment;
Far more diverse options -- in-store, online, delivered, picked up, stores, markets, kiosks. Focus on taste and convenience, supported by health and nutrition. Greater differentiation -- compelling reasons to come to Store/Chain X -- maybe exclusivity of brands within particular chains;
Automatized, robotized, impersonal, humanless;
More home delivery and customized consumer experience;
More high end and low-end retailers, ethnic supermarkets;
We’ll see better-educated management teams with a more rounded experience consisting of not only produce marketing but whole-sore experience and rich in team development and HR knowledge;
Will be more like Europe is now;
A more educated consumer will force retailers to provide them with more product information than they do now;
Consumer access to product sources and production methods;
Increased home delivery;
Smaller format & unique experience; and
Retailers will become destinations where ideas are nurtured and food is seen as a way of preventative maintenance for health and wellness.

TK: The collective wisdom of the industry certainly calls for more online business and home delivery, but what form and function retail stores themselves take is open to several interpretations. Will it be a “customized experience” or less staff and impersonal? “ Destination stores” or low-end outlets? Or — as is so often the case with all talk of the future — a good bit of both?

Pick three - changes coming in the next 25 years

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 06:10:22 GMT

The collective wisdom of the industry typically gets it right.

If two heads are better than one, then dozens of opinions are that much superior compared with a solitary response.

The winding path of the fresh produce industry over the past 125 years has been chronicled by The Packer, and we have published editorial content from the coming 125th anniversary edition and also previously published articles from “A Century of Produce,” and The Packer 75th anniversary edition.

Previous blog posts have looked at industry responses The Packer’s 125th anniversary survey , including:

What is the future of produce wholesalers? Survey says..

If only my business had....

Blaming it on the fax; the biggest change agents in the past 25 years

Industry weighs in on changes to come in retailing

What’s the most important industry development?

Today, let’s look at the answers to this query from the survey:

Name the three most significant industry innovations or developments that will mark the next 25 years.

Here are the industry responses:

Compostable/Biodegradable Packaging; Drones/GPS technology in farm practices; hothouse/greenhouse technology;
Artificial intelligence applied to better manage farm resources like irrigation, pesticide application and labor utilization; Decrease in transit times as self driving allows for closer “trains” of vehicles on highways to reduce congestions and lower costs; Better understanding of genetics will increase the consumer desired attributes in fresh produce;
Automation for harvesting, delivery and food safety; Product Innovation - Breeding; Omni-channel and consumer experience;
A. Robotic farming in the tree fruit industry B. Packaging improvements that are truly recyclable C. Driverless trucking in dedicated lanes that helps alleviate driver shortages;
I believe that when organic produce is priced similar to conventional that will be a big leap forward; Plastic packaging becomes obsolete; Autonomous tractors delivering our produce;
Delivery to homes, Schools offering healthy food options,Consumers education;
1. Automation 2. Water Conservation 3. Food safety;
Mechanical harvesting;
Hand held device to determine ripeness and flavor of fruit;
Home shelf-life enhancing containers which will reduce waste and spoilage (this is already available;
Improved food safety controls -Concerns about protecting the environment -Improving freshness and flavor which will stimulate an immediate repeat purchase;
Pay attention to what Rodale has done and will do;
Global tracking packaging on line sales;
ncreased production closer to the end user; Robotics advanced enough to harvest the most delicate crops; Brick and Mortar retail wins out over Ecommerce;
Mechanical harvesting, sustainability and GMO acceptance;
1. Produce fully taking its place in food culture. 2. Ability to grow in diverse, even inhospitable, places (e.g. vertical farming in urban areas). 3. Solving the food safety issues;
Self-check/home delivery, facial recognition for human and things/applications, AI/IoT/5-6G;
AI and Machine learning; More robotics in the field; Utilization of microbiome as a means of utilizing resident beneficials;
Automation;
Continued global infusion of regionally off-season produce; Continued focus of what defines high quality produce; Merging of high tech and human innovation;
Online ordering; consolidation; automation;
1. Enhanced and more thorough inspections of produce at the farms and distribution points. 2. Better interaction between shippers and retailers to reduce market glut, thus reducing market flood and giving the consumer a cheaper product;
Development of improved varieties through genetic modification, improved efficiency of cold chain management, improved trace back methods;
“Good yielding genetics that have flavor; More cpg & fresh collaborations at store level; Packaging improvements on shelf life and flavor quality enhancement through varietal improvements;
Elimination of zero tolerance for pathogens;
Big production in small spaces, breeding innovations and protection of water resources.

TK: The vision for innovations includes hopeful outcomes on automated harvest and driverless freight. Can the next 25 years indeed accomplish such giant leaps? Time will tell, but the industry responses also paint a hopeful picture of innovations in packaging, well-received genetic modification of fresh produce, advances in food safety, and more. I believe the collective industry wisdom is more than wishful thinking, so mark well these responses.

What is the future of produce wholesalers? Survey says..

Fri, 23 Sep 2022 20:51:33 GMT

In anticipation of The Packer’s 125th-anniversary issue , we have enjoyed publishing past anniversary articles from the Century of Produce and also posted industry columns for the 125th-anniversary edition.

In this space, I have also been revealing the results of an industry survey connected with the 125th-anniversary edition.

Check out some of the links:

Industry weighs in on changes to come in retailing

If only my business had...

Blaming it on the fax; the biggest change agents in the past 25 years

What’s the most important industry development?

What consumer trends will drive produce demand for the next 25 years?

Today the industry survey question was this:

How will the role of wholesale markets/wholesalers evolve in the next 25 years?

Here are answers from the industry survey:

The wholesale market will be much more value-added driven;
They will diminish;
Will become more value-added oriented beyond just holding inventory locally for their customers for staple items. Will prove their value by becoming local source (having inventory) of “specialty” items that will multiply as USA becomes more multi-ethnic and those different cuisines become more popular;
Gapping supply line;
I know it was once thought that wholesalers and wholesale marketers could be a thing of the past, but they continue to show their worth every year and many are quite prosperous. As the population continues to grow, these types of business fill a huge need by being able to supply multiple products, sizes, merchandising and more to specific regions - and are able to do on scales both large and small. The terminal markets would be the ideal candidates for large retail chains distribution centers. This would be a great partnership. The retailers get very knowledgeable produce people, something they are lacking and wholesalers get increased traffic and there could be cost savings for both;
It feels to be a dying factor;
There will always be a need. Those wholesalers that are able to adapt with the next big curves will survive;
There will always be a place for wholesalers, as it makes business sense for retailers to always “buy short” and have the ability to fill in with a local supplier;
They will become more and more like growers/shippers, offering long term pricing, giving out ad items etc. Just in time deliveries will be important to buyers who are being evaluated on turns. Smaller cities will see what has happened to retailers, extreme consolidation with only two big companies surviving will the door open for the smaller niche providers;
Their role will be reduced as customers seek more and more local/organic produce, year-round. Starting with BrightFarms, etc.;
Less terminal markets and more direct purchasing from shippers or through buying groups;
I see this segment as surviving through brand development...buying and reselling is not enough. There needs to be an identity that they’re customers can trust in and stand by, otherwise they are only buying a commodity which is easily devalued in the marketplace;
They will be gone, they almost are already, there won’t be much space left for them in continuing improvement of supply chains, and delivery mechanisms;
No business group is more adaptable than wholesalers, especially “terminal” markets. They will ID the trends and capitalize on them as they have been doing for decades;
Individuals and companies would be identified as bundles of commodities and would be marketed to as such according to their perceived budget constraint/ability to pay. An effort toward responsibility shopping and social responsibility, waste reduction, health, and climate change;
Probably be less of a need for them;
Look at the Philly Market. Each Wholesaler has it’s own Supermarket connection Hunts Point has all of the ethnic stores;
Focus more on inventory care, storage and turns;
Will have to be more conscious of food safety;
More and more consolidation of the wholesale industry due to costs will force the larger retailers to become their own wholesalers to ensure supply and control cost. This will unfortunately drive smaller wholesalers out of business;
Adoption of improved technology for quality improvements and risk management;
Less important- most retailers and food service companies want to go direct when ever possible.
They will further consolidate;
They will need to continue to be problem solvers and find ways to stay relevant and valuable. True category management and innovative merchandising concepts for their customers.

TK: Many of the survey responses noted the resiliency of wholesalers and terminal markets. They will adapt and adjust, turn to more value-added, local sourcing, brand development and so on. At the same time, the forces of consolidation continue to bear down on the segment; without responsive change to market forces, the path ahead will be stoney.

How the railroad evolved the produce industry

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 06:20:43 GMT

Produce and Railroad Industries Evolve Together

Not only did railroads expand the market for fresh fruits and vegetables, but they opened many smaller growing regions to national trade and forced produce suppliers ultimately to work together to combat the big business of the railroad on things like outrageous fees, logistics and standards.

“Before the advent of steam navigation and railroads, each town and city was dependent on the immediately surrounding country for its supply of perishable vegetable products, and the markets were only supplied during the brief period when each of these products was locally in season,” noted The Packer’s 100 Years of Produce: Remembering the 1890s.

In the Progressive Era, emerging businesses evolved quickly, bringing progress to a once-rural nation.

Secretary of Agriculture Henry C. Wallace exclaimed in a 1922 journal article, “Agriculture is our greatest industry; transportation is our second greatest.

These two industries are dependent upon one another and the national well-being is dependent upon them both.”

Records show that the California citrus industry benefited tremendously in the late 1880s and early 1890s. “Within 10 years of the first rail shipment, the volume of California citrus moving east had grown to more than 2,000 rail cars annually. In another five years the volume had doubled,” according to records from the Railway and Locomotive Historical Society’s RailGiants Train Museum.

Perishables Test Systems in Place

The fragility of fresh produce meant headaches for all involved initially. Rail cars designed for cattle and cargo either didn’t protect product enough from the elements or were so enclosed that interior product began to heat and rot quickly. After the introduction of springs to cushion the ride, fresh vegetables saw less damage.

In addition to quality issues, fees were a major complaint that the industry lodged in the railroad’s heyday. Shipping fees were an obvious necessity, but they could skyrocket given the season and availability of rail cars. Produce shippers could incur demurrage fees or track storage charges if they were unable to get produce unloaded in a timely manner (even though sometimes it was the railroad who was responsible for the delays).

Produce freight and refrigeration costs for rail transport in 1914 were more than 20% of the retail price of California oranges and lemons, according to The Packer’s Century in Produce: Remembering the 1910s, and the same fees made up 31% of the wholesale price of those same items.

However, some companies were willing to pay a fee for improved service.

In the early 1900s, innovative produce marketers looking to move product outside their immediate region utilized the railroads’ “express” service, which mostly ran on passenger trains. Equivalent to a modern-day FedEx service, this mode of transport carried packages weighing more than 4 pounds (which the U.S. Post Office wouldn’t take), faster than freight trains could but with a higher fee.

This system faded out quickly after the country’s entrance into World War I, when the government took over the railroads for war efforts.

Battling Logistics

Timeliness of deliveries was another huge logistical challenge. As a business, railroads wanted to move as many carloads as possible in the shortest amount of time.

“Refrigerated” cars (initially those with ice bunkers built in on each end with air circulating around the load) helped to maintain the quality of fruits and vegetables going long distances, but often for produce marketers rail cars weren’t available.

R.O. Phillips of the International Apple Distributors Association testified to this problem in 1916. “Refrigerator cars were being used in various parts of the country to haul furniture and other commodities, while perishable goods were rotting at points of origin,” noted The Packer’s 100 Years of Produce: Remembering the 1910s. Railroads’ reach made produce handlers realize that they needed a voice.

Related content:
125 Years in Produce
A look back: The rise of refrigeration
1944-1969: Propelling the industry through packaged produce

Century of Produce: Making of a Deal

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 06:05:54 GMT

The following article, from The Packer’s “A Century of Produce,” was published in 1993.

As The Packer prepares to publish our 125th-anniversary edition later this year, we are posting some of the writing from previous anniversary publications .

This story was penned by Donna Vestal, consulting editor and chief researcher for the publication.

The Making of a Deal

Growers and shippers forge -- and endure -- countless changes in the evolution of their business

By Donna Vestal

Gil Papazian was 19, unsure of the lettuce business and suddenly in charge of Lucky Strike Brokerage, South San Francisco, because his father had suffered a nervous breakdown. Those were the facts when, in 1949, he found himself driving around Watsonville, not knowing what to do next.

It was then that he saw lettuce being packed in fiberboard cartons out in a field.

“Holy mackerel, what’s going on?” he thought to himself, knowing that for decades the lettuce industry had carted lettuce to the shed and packed four dozen heads in a crate, with ice. “Who can I talk to about this?”

He stopped and asked a crew member, who told him the man he needed to talk to was Bud Antle -- Mister Bud Antle.

Scared to death, Papazian showed up at Antle’s office, not quite sure what he was going to say.

“I really like what you people are doing,” he told the sales manager in the outer office. Suddenly, a “humongous” guy stood in the doorway and a voice boomed, “You bums from San Francisco are no good.”

“I guess you’re Mr. Antle,” Papazian said, trying to hold back tears. He mustered some courage and told Antle -- not in the most gentlemanly of terms -- that he didn’t need him.

The big man then put his arm around the young man’s shoulders and said, “Armenian, come with me.” Antle then took the young man out to the fields and showed him how all produce grew. And that would continue through the years.

With those words, Papazian became part of a revolutionary development in the growing and shipping of fresh produce. And he also benefited from the notion of partnering -- an important concept in the growth of the produce industry.

“I didn’t know anything. Bud put me in business,” Papazian recalls today. “He was the lettuce business.”

What Antle and other pioneers in the Salinas lettuce business of the 1940s and ’50s managed to do was make technology work for the grower-shipper quickly and profitably.

Prior to that time, not a single carload of lettuce left a shed’s loading dock without being top-iced for the long trek eastward. More than a million tons of ice, either crushed, blown or in block form for bunker use, was manufactured in the Salinas Valley for the cooling of vegetables while in transit during 1950.

With the advent of vacuum cooling, the shipper delivered the packed cartons to a central plant, which vacuum-cooled and loaded all of the various shippers’ products. The shed ice pack, which was criticized by retailers as being too heavy and messy and often damaged, rapidly became a thing of the past. By 1954, 75 percent of all lettuce grown and harvested in the Salinas-Watsonville district was vacuum-cooled.

“Vacuum cooling was so great,” said David Stidolph of Mann Packing Co. Inc., Salinas. “The introduction was so unbelievable that it replaced the second largest ice industry in America, which was the Salinas Valley ice industry, second only to the city of New York.”

Hand in hand with vacuum cooling came the fiberboard cartons, which allowed growers to move the packing process out to the field.

This new packing process also enabled newcomers to enter the lettuce shipping business with merely a stitcher truck and a cutting and packing crew. Suddenly, large lettuce acreages were produced in previously unheard of districts. Vacuum cooling tubes could be moved in to accommodate short deals in out-of-the-way places. Huge crews of field packers could be temporarily moved into these new districts, and it was not unusual for shipments to suddenly jump by as much as 100 carlot equivalents per day -- with demoralizing market reaction.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Vacuum cooling technology and the spread of field packing may have changed the way product was handled, it could not change the dynamics of supply and demand.

But that’s the story of the growing and shipping of fresh fruits and vegetables.

A deal’s a deal

By the late 1960s, California, Florida, Texas and Arizona accounted for 60 percent of the total fresh vegetable production in the United States. This was a huge change from 60 years earlier, when the major deals were local ones like tomatoes in Mississippi and Tennessee, strawberries in Louisiana, apples in Missouri and vegetables in Michigan.

These and many other deals were the focal point of produce buyers through the early to middle part of the 20th century. Distribution often meant the farmer simply trucking his product to the farmers market in the nearest city. The rails whistled through and carried produce from the bigger deals into carlot receivers in the distribution centers across the country, such as Chicago, New York, Cincinnati and Kansas City.

The grower-shipper, responsible for all freight charges, shouldered nearly all the market risk in sending his product east to a commission merchant. Sometimes the price received didn’t even cover the freight.

“Those were the days when they would pack crates of lettuce, put it into the railcar, and then shovel tons of ice on top of it and see if they could get that car to market before the ice melted and the lettuce deteriorated,” said Bruce Taylor, chairman of Fresh International Corp. “There were no mechanical refrigeration systems, virtually no precooling technology at that time.”

The grower-shipper also had no reliable source of market information except from the dealers in the markets. Growers did not know which market was offering the best price, nor when would be the best time to take their commodities there.

The Market News Service, established in 1915, helped provide that information. But it was no easy task in the days before computers and fax machines.

“We had men in the markets early in the morning gathering data from the dealers and farmers,” recalled Clarence Kitchen, who was closely involved with the service’s inception. “By noon, this information was telegraphed to Washington where it was compiled along with reports from other offices. These cumulative reports were then sent out to the field offices where they were mimeographed and distributed to the newspapers. We also telegraphed the report to anyone who was willing to pay for the charges.”

Most of the early reports were weekly, and some appeared only once a month. But this still was a major breakthrough for the grower.

The government had to get involved in growers’ survival in other ways, too. The Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act helped rein in problem dealers. Marketing orders arose out of the 1930s farmers’ cooperative movement aimed at combating low prices and chaotic marketing conditions.

The cooperatives tried to raise prices by voluntarily cutting sales and setting quality standards. But most cooperative attempts failed because nonparticipating producers benefited from the higher prices without restricting marketing or observing the quality standards.

As a result, Congress in 1937 enacted legislation authorizing marketing orders for certain commodities, giving growers unprecedented market power. Quality standards, such as those for Florida and Texas citrus, required fruit to meet minimum ripeness requirements. Other orders, such as those for California and Arizona citrus, regulated the flow of product to market.

Marketing orders were necessary because of the growth in production, most notably in California, but also in developing regions in Florida, Texas and Washington state. To compete effectively, producers needed to have some control over their marketing situations.

In the 1940s, the true potential of the Western produce industry was revealed. Despite a manpower shortage, war was a tremendous boost for the West as the government urged increased production and the West complied. The lettuce companies in the Salinas Valley especially benefited from the Japanese evacuation because they were able to instantly enlarge their operations and profit during World War II. Large grower-shippers grew from family proprietorships to corporations.

Bernie Egan of D-N-E World Fruit Sales, Fort Pierce, Fla., recalled in 1993 that price ceilings during the war forced some people into direct buying from sources of supply.

“Afterward, larger jobbers and chains had gotten a taste of it and continued on,” he said.

The retail chains consolidated and got bigger, with more of them exploring the advantages of buying produce direct, with their own representatives checking quality and availability. Field-buying operations quickly became part of the produce jargon.

While this trend increased the volume demand for product, it also resulted in a concentration of buying power, which placed the grower-shipper of perishable products, already at the weather’s mercy, at a disadvantage price-wise. Big buying organizations could dictate price, terms and conditions to thousands of growers and shippers of perishable produce.

“It was a case of the tail wagging the dog, and the ‘tail’ was having a field day taking advantage of the situation,” recalled California lettuce shipper Jim Brock in his memoirs. “If the shipper demanded federal inspection at destination to verify the buyers’ claims, he would very likely be punished by not being able to do business with them again. The shipper was over a barrel and if he complained too much, there were many other shippers with whom the powerful buyers could do business.”

For these growers, the worries about retail buying power were exemplified in “guaranteed prices” -- that were only guaranteed for the buyer -- and rejected carloads. Grower-shippers worked together through cooperatives, regional associations and less-formal efforts to attain their own power level.

Tom Merrill of Merrill Farms, Salinas, noted a lack of success with group marketing efforts, outside of Sunkist Growers Inc. “I guess we’re too independent,” he said in the early 1990s.

He added that the industry hadn’t really progressed very much in its sales or marketing practices, with sales often made at cost.

So what has changed for the growing-shipping community?

Jay Holford, chief executive officer of Seald-Sweet Growers, Vero Beach Fla., first went to work for Sunkist Growers in 1960.

“We had as many complications in those days as we have today, probably just a different form,” he said in 1993, pointing out that most fruit was shipped by rail cars up until the 1970s. Also, most packing houses were located along railroad tracks.

“Packing houses picked all day, packed the next day, loaded rail cars, shipped them north or shipped them east, depending on the source, and the fruit essentially was inventoried in rail cars headed for terminal markets,” Holford recalled.

Much of the fruit was sold through auctions.

“The fruit sold on these auctions set the market and through telephone and wire services in those days, everybody knew what fruit they received on the auctions, and this was the method by which the price was set,” Holford said.

He also noted that over the years, the warehousing of citrus revolved backward to the source, to the packing house.

Industry veteran Joe Obucina said he has seen tremendous strides in all aspects in quality. “The industry became quality minded,” he said, pointing to packaging and variety improvements as most noteworthy in the early 1990s, along with machine harvesting of some products.

Those improvements, like the California lettuce industry’s use of field and vacuum packing, came in answer to problems in getting a marketable product to receivers. Along those same lines came innovations across the country in bin shipping, retail and consumer packs and foodservice packs.

First and foremost among the growers’ problems, of course, has been Mother Nature. From freezes to droughts to pounding hurricanes to pesky pests to crop diseases, she has thrown a wrench into the best-laid plans of producers from the Salinas Valley to Prince Edward Island.

Egan of D-N-E can recall more than 10 serious freezes since the late 1950s in Florida.
Merrill notes that, unfortunately, somebody has to have a little bad luck for the market to be at break-even or above.

“Usually when you have a bumper crop, your best crop, it is the cheapest. There’s a surplus,” Merrill said. “That hasn’t changed; this is a feast-or-famine industry.”

But, he added, grower-shippers seem to thrive on adversity.

Talk about adversity: Transportation, from the horse-drawn carriage to the rails to the trucks, always has been a major problem for the grower-shipper. At times through the last 100 years, grower-shippers have feared their livelihood would be at an end because of limited equipment, high freight rates, service snafus, you name it.

“Several hundred carloads of apples will either go to the cider, vinegar or canning plants or will be dumped unless there is a material difference in freight rates,” protested C.W. McCullagh of Hood River, Ore., in 1921.

Eventually, the railroads gave up on the produce industry, Merrill said. “It got to where service in the 1970s was not what they were delivering in the 1930s and 1940s.”

Along with transportation, refrigeration (actually just ice in the beginning) was crucial to the development of the fresh fruit and vegetable industry. Not only did refrigeration improvements aid the quality of products while in transit, but cold-storage facilities helped prolong the marketing season. As early as 1900, cold storage was an important factor in the apple market, allowing some market maneuvering room for shippers. Facilities were erected in terminal markets across the country.

The ability to store product added an increased element of speculation to the shipper’s business. Sell now or wait for the market to climb? These options were never available before.

Another important development was centralized packing. Take apples: Because of the heavy spray and pesticide residues (from natural products like arsenic) left on fruit prior to the development of DDT in the 1940s, apples had to be literally cooked in a hot bath to remove these potentially harmful deposits. The individual apple grower could not afford to install the necessary equipment, but could pool his harvest with those of his neighbors in a central bathing and packing facility.
In the fields themselves, important advances included:

Irrigation, the effect of which is rather self-explanatory. Suffice it to say that without irrigation many of our most productive growing areas -- like the Wenatchee Valley -- would not exist.
Improvements in seed varieties. “The lettuce business used to be one where you would cut 200 or 300 cartons to the acre, and you thought you were doing pretty well,” said Taylor of Fresh International Corp in 1993. “With some pioneering seed technology and seed breeding programs, the lettuce business now is one where you cut between 700 and 800 cartons per acre. And so you get much more product off the same amount of ground. And fortunately, the market has grown with that.” Holford of Seald-Sweet noted that in the early 1990s, a number of new varieties came into the citrus industry, particularly with grapefruit. “Where for so many years it was totally white grapefruit that was grown and marketed in this country, we’ve seen the ruby red become the dominant variety domestically,” he said in 1993.
Agricultural chemicals, which helped bring about an explosion in food production. For centuries, farmers relied on natural poisons such as arsenic, lead and copper. Fruits and vegetables sometimes would come to market dusted with these pesticides. In 1926, there was an “Arsenic on American Apples” scare in England, which resulted in widespread publicity. Then came DDT, the first widely used synthetic pesticide. It was sprayed by the U.S. Army during World War II to prevent the spread of malaria by killing mosquitoes. It was so effective that by the end of the war, American farmers had begun applying it to their crops. Once farmers had DDT, which worked faster and killed more insects than any chemical they’d ever used, they rapidly abandoned arsenic and other age-old pesticides. The use of synthetic chemicals rapidly improved yield and quality.

But even in the 1950s, the industry was acutely aware of the need for care in the use of chemicals, said Alan Mills, who worked for the California Grape & Tree Fruit League for 27 years. The league, in fact, had an integrated pest management research project in the early 50s, before the EPA was ever thought of. The industry members collected voluntary funds from growers and funded an integrated pest management study at the University of California.

“These concerns about the safety of chemicals prompted the industry to want to handle the chemical carefully, and we at the Grape & Tree Fruit League wrote a manual on the proper use of chemicals and we had the growers maintain a history of their use so that they would know that there wouldn’t be residues, and that was long before EPA and long before Rachel Carson (author of Silent Spring) wrote her book,” Mills said. “The growers have always been aware of the need for caution in the use of chemicals. They didn’t have to wait until somebody pointed it out.”

Carson, in her 1962 book, cited the detrimental effects of the misuse and misapplication of insecticides. She attacked the too-free use of pesticidal chemicals. The media, and a large percentage of the public, rendered a verdict of guilty in the case of toxic chemicals.

The Packer warned: “Let’s not panic, but all concerned, including growers and chemical men, should be braced for stormy weather through the fall months, on this particular subject. The situation calls for the utmost care in preventing another crisis similar to the cranberry scare in 1959, but one that could be of far greater proportions.”

The Packer in 1966 noted that the Calif.-Ariz. vegetable industry was in the midst of a quiet revolution: expanding use of chemical control for weeds was slashing into the basic need for field labor. Chemicals were becoming the accepted method of weed control and were being used liberally.
This controversy continued, eventually culminating in the Alar scare of 1989, which resulted in huge losses for apple growers. Many growers, like California’s Tanimura & Antle, then looked into reducing pesticide use and organic growing.

Labor and business

Another problem for grower-shippers through the years has been labor. The business of growing fruits and vegetables often has rested economically on the availability of an abundance of cheap labor.

During World War II, the industry faced an emergency labor shortage. The U.S. government worked out the temporary immigration to the United States of Mexican and Bahamian nationals under contract. More than 4,000 were admitted in 1942 under what became known as the “bracero” program.

The foreign labor program proved to be the savior of the Western produce industry during the war. There was a hiatus right after World War II when the program was allowed to die. But, a massive surge of illegal immigrants convinced the U.S. government of the need for continuance, and in the late 40s, it was re-established under Public Law 78. The bracero program ultimately outlived the war by some 20 years and became a fixed feature of the agricultural economy in many western states.

When the bracero program was discontinued in the 1960s, the produce industry panicked, envisioning labor scarcity and rising labor rates.

Merrill, in 1993, recalled that when the government terminated the Bracero program, the growers were taken by surprise.

“They just said you’re not going to have braceros,” Merrill said. “We didn’t know whether to plant a crop or not.”

Despite the hoopla, the same people who had worked in the area before showed up with green cards, he said, noting there was always a certain amount of forged green cards. “Forged green cards got to be an industry in itself,” Merrill said, adding that even in the early 1990s, the government never was able to control its southern borders.

“From the late 1970s until today, there has been a generally plentiful labor around,” he said in 1993.

Labor also has placed the growing community in a glaring spotlight through the years.

Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers union, for example, were household words in the 1970s.

Strikes on California grape growers in the 1960s, along with the much-publicized support of Robert Kennedy and other notables, brought the plight of the poor farm worker into the mainstream.

“When he first appeared on the scene, we didn’t know who (Chavez) was,” recalled Mills, then with the California Grape & Tree Fruit League. “We found he was a social revolutionary, with the goal of elevating the status of Hispanics in the United States.”

He noted that the grape industry had Chavez on their backs for years before the press got involved.

But when the press got involved, the industry found itself under intense scrutiny.

“Chavez would have the American public think that all grape growers are somewhat akin to feudal lords, overseeing vast estates,” complained Walter M. Tindall, general manager of Blue Anchor Inc., in 1970.

And Chavez was successful with his message -- for a time, at least. Through much of the 1970s, the UFW’s strikes, secondary boycotts and the accompanying violence were regular front-pages stories for The Packer. For the grower, there was fear, a sense of helplessness and anger.

“We had a tough time getting our side of the story presented,” recalled Merrill of Merrill Farms. The issues were complex and unfortunately did not simply come down to a question of working conditions and pay.

“Many of the workers were very happy and didn’t want to sign up with the union,” recalled Robert Reinecke, who at the time was a vice president for Heggblade-Marguleas Inc. Chavez, however, worked to commit growers to signing with the UFW, and he opposed secret ballots for the farm workers.

Also, the Teamsters union rivaled the UFW in the early 1970s.

“It isn’t a question of unionization,” Daryl Arnold said in 1971 about the California labor situation concerning lettuce. “People must understand first off that this is a jurisdictional dispute.”

Arnold, the northern division manager of Freshpict Foods Inc., was directly involved in negotiations between that firm and the UFW Organizing Committee. When, on Oct. 8, 1970, Freshpict was forced to sign a UFW contract under the threat of a secondary boycott of its parent firm’s (Purex) product line, Arnold resigned his position.

He then became president of the Free Marketing Council, which was established in 1970 by western agricultural leaders to combat a secondary boycott being leveled against western lettuce growers and shippers.

Secondary boycotts, picketing, arson, violence and other scare tactics all became rather routine news stories for The Packer. The secondary boycott, however, put the real whammy on the industry as retailers were forced to not carry products. In the end, California was forced to accept unionization and the inherent management problems that followed. Other areas, such as Texas and Florida, were not hit by unionization, but the threat of such a system forced them to do a better job of paying and serving workers.

By the 1990s, few shippers were union shops. So what did all this strife accomplish?

The history books note that after years of struggle, the UFW, headed by soft-spoken and charismatic Chavez, succeeded in improving work conditions for the mostly Chicano “stoop laborers” who followed the cycle of planting and harvesting across the American West. He was their hero.

For the grower, there is no talk of heroism in the history books, although agriculture certainly acted courageously. Because of that courage, laborers and growers now have the ability to work together toward a common goal.

Noted Reinecke: “It was hard for the grower to work under the rules of a labor union, but they found they could survive and get along.”

Another threat to traditional methods of growing and shipping produce emerged in the 1970s in the form of conglomerates -- or corporate farming.

Against a back drop of rising inflation and land speculation there was a rising fear among shippers that big-money corporations would come to control agriculture.

“Everyone feared that big oil companies -- like Tenneco and Superior, which did get involved -- would come out to California,” said Reinecke, who, in the 1970s, was the president of Tenneco West, a agriculture subsidiary of Tenneco.

“Everybody feared that they would make money in oil and not care if produce made money,” he said.

But the big companies found, instead, that economic forces of the time made farming an expensive proposition. Mechanization trends, labor, escalating energy costs and diminishing water resources all complicated the picture and all most could do was lose money. They soon retreated.

Nevertheless, corporate farming did come to produce as most large family operations incorporated. In this way, they limited their personal liabilities and created the mechanisms for passing the firm from generation to generation.

Customer needs

Survival for the grower-shippers and marketers has come to mean truly understanding customer needs.

“The way this industry operated in the 1950s, typically you had four, five or six people around a desk with telephones selling, basically, commodities. Most of them did not have too much grasp of merchandising, chain stores, modern-day marketing and advertising and selling,” said Bruce Paschal, vice president of sales in the early 1990s for A. Duda & Sons Inc., Oviedo, Fla. “Some of that still exists to this day.”

But overall, the grower-shipper is much more aware of the needs of the end user -- be it the chain, the independent grocer or foodservice operator, said David Stidolph, another longtime produce man.
Noted Taylor in 1993: “It used to be you could put 24 heads of lettuce in a carton and ship it east and that would satisfy all the requirements of any of the customers. Today the markets have become fragmented into various niches. You’ve got the foodservice niche with the processed; you’ve got the retail markets, which want wrapped lettuce and salad mixes; and you’ve got the wholesale market, which wants something that’s flexible between the foodservice and the retail side.”

Obucina marvels at the young people in the industry today.

“Their thinking is so far ahead of mine 25 years ago,” he said in 1993. “They look deeper in to the future. When we started out, it was the basics.”

Obucina said building business on partnerships is not a new concept for the produce industry.

“We had those 40, 50 years ago. There was a bond, a trust,” he said. “You stayed with people. Just because somebody was a penny cheaper, you didn’t go with them.”

Papazian, still at Lucky Strike Brokerage, though his son runs the place, also is amazed at what the second and third generation individuals are accomplishing today. But he still yearns for the pioneering days after World War II, with the likes of Bruce Church, Ken Nutting and yes, Bud Antle.

Put simply, he says: “These people knew their craft.”

Century of Produce: Sold at the Clack of a Gavel

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 06:05:50 GMT

Century of Produce: Agriculture: the seed of early communication

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 06:05:46 GMT

The following article, from The History of The Packer in “A Century of Produce,” was published in 1993.

As The Packer prepares to publish our 125th-anniversary edition later this year, we are posting some of the writing from previous anniversary publications .

Here, then managing editor Gordon Billingsley talks about the origin of agricultural communications - and the birth of The Packer.

Agriculture: the seed of early communication

By Gordon Billingsley

Eve is said to have written the first chapter, when she handed Adam an apple.

Cave dwellers in Northern Italy took a stab at it in their wall drawings.

And preserved bits of the world’s first written language, Sumerian, prominently featured agriculture and such Middle Eastern produce as dates and figs about 10,000 years ago, historians say.

Agriculture was the seed of civilization. It should be no surprise that agriculture was a principal force in early communication.

It began with oral histories that passed along the secrets of seeds -- and thus survival. The early cave dwellers devised a more permanent record of their daily activities with drawings on the walls of their homes depicting hoeing and plowing.

Writing samples found in what was ancient Sumeria show that writing also offered the chance to capture and coordinate information about the supplies and distribution of food within growing cities and civilizations. Tallies and inventories of supplies are common records.

The first known agriculture textbook, historians believe, was written about 2,100 years ago by a Roman expert named Marcus Cato. It was, however, the invention of the movable type press by Johann Gutenberg in the mid-1400s that gave rise to widespread records of agricultural activity, including the first widely printed account of Eve’s brush with produce history in Gutenberg’s famous printed Bible.

European manuals instructing lords of manors on how to manage their estates were common between 1500 and 1800. One of the first English language attempts was an epic-length poem by Londoner Thomas Tusser called Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandrie, in which he advised growers to be near their markets and to keep their corn dry.

The first recorded agriculture report to Europe from the New World was written by Christopher Columbus. It included notice of new vegetable crops like corn (maize) and of New World versions of vegetables like yams.

“The land is very fertile, and is cultivated with yams, kidney beans and another grain like panic called by them mahiz of very excellent flavor cooked or roasted....”

More than 100 years later, early American settlers wrote of their own agricultural efforts. William Bradford’s journal of 1621 -- complete with quaint spellings -- offers an account of early North American corn plantings often cited during the U.S. holiday of Thanksgiving.

“... Squanto stood them in good stead, showing them both the maner how to set it, and after how to dress & tend it. Also he tould them, excepte they gott fish & set with it (in these old grounds) it would come to nothing.”

But the godfathers of agriculture information and reporting in the colonies were the fathers of the nation, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. The two experimented with crops and equipment and wrote extensively in diaries and letters, often exchanging information.

Jefferson once wrote to Washington describing a crop rotation that included wheat, corn, potatoes, peas, rye or wheat, clover and buckwheat.

Their activities gave rise to the notion that cultivation of the soil was a scientific endeavor and their writings seeded the creation of agriculture societies like the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture. These societies saw the need for published information about and for growers of agricultural products.

By 1819, the first farm magazine, which also was an agribusiness marketing journal, American Farmer, began publishing to help farmers develop their skills “in the management of their resources.” It also promised to contain a “faithful account of the actual prices of all those principal articles, which the people of the country generally have to buy, or to sell, in the Baltimore market.”

As a journal for marketing as well as husbandry, American Farmer pointed the way for many successful publications that followed. The longest-running success belongs to Prairie Farmer magazine in Illinois. It began publishing in 1847 and is the oldest still-published farm magazine in the United States.

But it really was the latter part of the century in which agriculture and agribusiness publishing and information took hold.

At that time the land grant universities, created by Abraham Lincoln in 1862, developed agricultural experiment stations under federal legislation. This gave rise to vast amounts of agricultural marketing and husbandry information.

By 1897, for instance, the U.S. Department of Agriculture printed more than 6 million copies of 424 publications and another one-half million copies of its Yearbook of Agriculture. Private publishers jumped into the game as well. The 1880s saw more than 150 agriculture journals roll off the presses.

Roughly two-thirds of the publications were general farm magazines, but the other third were specialized publications featuring marketing or cultural information on single or narrower groups of commodities.

Over the 20 years from 1880 to 1900, farm publications grew to more than 350, and they increasingly specialized, with more than one-half reporting on small parts of the American agriculture and agribusiness scene. The most popular topics were crops, horticulture, poultry and dairy.

It was in this environment of increasing specialization of agriculture and agribusiness, and a growing awareness that agriculture needed to reach into city markets and distribution systems -- and needed to develop efficient marketing systems -- that a specialized trade newspaper called The Packer was founded Feb. 16, 1893.

Where were we in ’93?

Tue, 15 Nov 2022 07:41:22 GMT

I was thumbing through a copy of “The Packer, a Century of Produce,” published in 1993. It’s a rich collection of reflections, produce and people. When I think of 25 years ago, it still seems like yesterday.

By ’93 I had already been in the business nearly 20 years, starting at the local grocer in 1974. I saw it as a part-time, after-school job. Certainly not a career that I’d be writing about 45 years later.

By 1993 I already had worked as a produce manager in many stores, prior to The Packer’s 100-year celebration. I was fortunate to be promoted as a young produce supervisor in ’89, covering half the state, overseeing about 33 stores. By ’93 I had worked in that capacity for five years.

My time as a retail marketing “specialist” was an incredible span. During those years of monitoring and helping produce managers, my counterpart and I coordinated countless remodels and many new store openings. Those were long days (and nights), long weeks of planning and execution that only fueled our passion for the produce business. We were rewarded with a handful of trips each year, to trade shows or to tour growing areas. The experience was unforgettable.

In 1993, however, storm clouds gathered. This position would only last another year.

Our company, like some tend do to, chose to change the supervisor and buying structure. Right or otherwise, we ended up as store managers or in other, non-produce roles. It was a tough period, but I was determined to continue my produce career. So, I tested the waters elsewhere.

This new direction had its own collection of setbacks. After moving around to a few organizations, I discovered that, as in many businesses, you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince, so to speak.

In retrospect, this time was challenging, yet educational. Breaking away from my original big retailer, however familiar that was at the time, was the best decision I could have made.

Among other jobs and seeing many changes, I brokered produce, worked as a quality inspector, as a foodservice buyer, and bought for a booming retail chain in southern California. And was lucky to have a small role, a voice, in this proud old newspaper. All moves that were at first frightening but taught me that every day in our industry presents something new.

Best of all, I made many lifelong friends along the way. I enjoy today’s insightful, 125-year Packer op-ed contributions by produce industry leaders, and reflecting upon ’93, and the now-worn “Century of Produce” edition on my shelf, I wouldn’t change a thing.

I can only imagine what The Packer’s “Second Century” edition will hold.

Armand Lobato works for the Idaho Potato Commission. His 40 years’ experience in the produce business span a range of foodservice and retail positions. E-mail him at lobatoarmand@gmail.com .

Related content:
Then and now: Reminiscences of a Packer Man - in 1923
Century of Produce: Anything is Possible in Produce’s Future
Happy Birthday Packer – Hard to Imagine 125 And Counting

Nothing new under the sun? Not so fast, my friend

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 06:10:35 GMT

“There is nothing new under the sun,” the writer of Ecclesiastes says. “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again.”

In reviewing responses to The Packer’s 125th-anniversary survey, I’m not quite sure that the “nothing is new” assertion holds up.

We asked 11 questions in our industry survey, and I’ve covered some of the industry answers in previous blog posts:

Pick three - changes coming in the next 25 years

What is the future of produce wholesalers? Survey says..

Blaming it on the fax; the biggest change agents in the past 25 years

What’s the most important industry development?

Industry weighs in on changes to come in retailing

If only my business had....

For this blog post, the question considered is this:

How has technology changed shipping produce in the last 25 years?

Here are many of the responses from those who took the survey:

Shipping is now traceable with the capability of being monitored in real time;
Decreased time from field to table and increased safety through traceability;
Created longer shelf life - period of time when product looks and tastes good;
The entire supply chain has radically changed at every touch point;
Technology have helped inventory, border crossing and billing;
Better and more efficient cold rooms have given products longer shelf life. Trucks backing up directly to dock doors never breaking the cold chain has led to more consistent deliveries throughout the world;
Mobile phones Air ride trailers E logs Better cooling and processing Better packaging;
Last 25 years have been focused on logistics. Moving produce around to all the people who need/want it for the lowest possible prices;
Refrigeration, plant genetic improvements for flavor and variety, food safety improvements Ethylene absorption, better trucking refrigeration equipment and tracking devices have been game changers;
Protecting the cold chain throughout. Quicker and more reliable truck transportation with products being carried at proper temperature and free from damage. Online buying and selling platforms have decreased the personal one on one relationships between buyer and seller;
Little to none;
Less direct human contact;
Being able to track loads thru GPS still amazes me and actually takes some of the excitement out of predicting when loads get out and arrive;
Much improved cold chain management, and how product is handled, and it has to as we have increased supply chain distances and time-lines;
Greater climate control and better packaging (including breathable films);
Home delivery, pick up at the store of plain/value-added produce, self-driving cars;
PTI and voice picking;
Remember Canadian Confirmation of Sales that had to be hand typed. Chalk board inventories in Sales offices;
Better field cooling. Better temp control at all levels. Accelerated traceability methodology. automatic sorting, automatic sizing, automatic bagging, automatic stacking, scanning for traceability;
It has great enhanced inventory control leading to a fresher product for the consumer;
Improved handling and grading capabilities allows detection of internal defects;
Blockchain and extended shelf life applications;
Traceability is the most profound impact Every unit can in theory be tracked back to the field and the worker who harvested it; and
Temp tales and GPS pallets. Can’t wait till it all is live and app based.

TK: There is plenty new under the sun for produce shippers, and tech has taken some of the drama out of the industry, as evidenced by the comment, “Being able to track loads thru GPS still amazes me and actually takes some of the excitement out of predicting when loads get out and arrive.”

There is no longer the receiver calling the broker at 11 pm and trying to get a read on where exactly that confounded truck is. Ah, these changing times - they aren’t so bad after all.

1919 – 1944: An eye on the west

Wed, 05 Oct 2022 18:44:12 GMT

1919 – 1944: An eye on the west

Advances in growing and advocacy propel industry expansion

Prosperity, depression and the second world war shaped the first half of the 20th century produce business. As the Western United States found its footing, it also found a proclivity for fresh fruit and vegetable production. California sugar beets gave way to lettuce, artichokes and other vegetables, and Washington and Oregon found favor with fruits. Despite the depression of the 1930s, Western growers were responsible for 46% of all the fruits, vegetables and nuts grown in the United States by 1940.

Trend in Cooling Heats Up Production

Today’s “Salad Bowl of the Nation”—Salinas Valley—got its start in 1922 when growers planted a mere 175 acres of lettuce. Because of the crop’s fragile nature, Los Angeles was the only market to receive the first shipment. But thanks to the expansion of ice bunker railcars, growers began to look outside California for market opportunities. Just eight years later, Salinas Valley boasted 43,000 acres of lettuce. “Within five years [of 1922] 18,000 railcars of lettuce, requiring more than 160,000 tons of ice, left the Salinas Valley for the East Coast. This amounted to 33% of the nation’s total production,” reported The Packer’s 100 Years of Produce: Remembering the 1920s.

Many Factors Feed Western Produce Expansion

The U.S. government asked fruit and vegetable growers to increase production during World War II, and Salinas Valley farmers were happy to comply. In fact, by 1950 California lettuce was being shipped to 46 states and comprised 45% to 50% of the country’s total lettuce output, notes The Packer’s 100 Years of Produce: Remembering the 1940s.
World War II also brought the unexpected advantage of bracero labor to the West, which helped to make farming vast plots more feasible. This Mexican labor program brought workers from south of the border on short-term contracts to serve as field hands (a low-paying job that many Americans didn’t want). This allowed huge growers in California, Arizona and other places to increase production as the war continued.

From 1942 to 1964, 4.6 million contracts were signed, with many individuals returning several times on different contracts, making it the largest U.S. contract labor program,

says the Bracero History Archive. Bracero laborers were promised decent pay, the assurance of work at least three-fourths of the term, free housing, insurance and free transport back to Mexico when their contract ended.

Modernization Helps Big Farms Prosper

California farmers were also quick to mechanize operations in the early 1900s, which allowed for higher production volumes and/or quicker and more efficient harvest. “By 1920, over 10% of California farms had tractors compared with 3.6% for the nation as a whole,” noted California Agriculture: Dimension and Issues. Five years later, nearly one-fifth of California farms operated tractors.
Irrigation was another technology that turned the West into a prime producer of fresh produce. Arizona’s Hoover Dam, which began operation in 1935, harnessed and diverted water on a large scale for southern California and Arizona. At the dam’s dedication, President Franklin D. Roosevelt highlighted this important fact: “… Beautiful and great as this structure is, it must also be considered in its relationship to the agricultural and industrial development and in its contribution to the health and comfort of the people of America who live in the Southwest.”

Making Their Voices Heard

Produce volume wasn’t the only thing that propelled California to the title of top producer in the early 20th century. Volume—in terms of voices—also began to matter. When railroads ramped up a 20% increase in refrigeration fees in 1926, farmers came together to organize the Western Growers Protective Association (now Western Growers). This move ultimately led to the railroads cancelling the fee, but more importantly, it gave the Western fresh produce industry a glimpse into the power of collective advocacy. Working together, the industry could accomplish so much more than if they labored alone.

1944-1969: Propelling the industry through packaged produce

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 06:18:42 GMT

While no one wants a war, the technologies that stem from them can bring big change.

In the early 1940s, rationing on canned and frozen fruits and vegetables was in full swing because the U.S. government required tin and metal for the war effort. The result? Consumers started grabbing more of the fresh stuff. Couple that with innovations in plastic films, trays and machinery during World War II, and you’ve got the ideal recipe for retail packaged produce packs.

Packaging Experiment Pays Off

Born of convenience, tomatoes were among the first commodities to be offered packaged to consumers, with 1-pound clear-wrapped tubes of tomatoes hitting shelves before the war in the 1930s.

“[Cellophane] … helped consumers make buying decisions for themselves based on sight, while keeping food products fresh and clean,” noted a Harvard Business School report titled “Cellophane, the New Visuality, and the Creation of Self-Service Food Retailing.”

In 1944, leaders from A&P, refrigeration companies and packaging manufacturing firms joined forces to conduct an experiment in produce packaging—a project packing fresh produce in a completely refrigerated environment. Companies used transparent film to overwrap fruits and vegetables, then they machine-labeled them, price stamped them and kept the commodities in a refrigerated warehouse until they could be sold to the consumer.

“This Columbus, Ohio, experiment … showed that prepackaging combined with refrigeration; saved half the usual distribution loss on some items, saved labor, lengthened shelf life of produce, and received good consumer acceptance of prepackaged produce,” - outlined a 1955 report “History of Prepackaging Fresh Fruits and Vegetables.”

Data from the study found that the estimated product loss for retailers who handled and trimmed fresh fruits and vegetables in their own backrooms unrefrigerated was about 30%. The experiment showed that the loss to retailers handling prepackaged produce under refrigeration the whole time was nearly zero. Retailers loved that their food waste was cut by nearly one-third. Consumers loved prepackaged produce for its convenience.

Ninety percent of housewives said they preferred consumer-sized packs because they “provided better quality, greater cleanliness and quicker shopping,” noted The Packer’s 100 Years of Produce: Remembering the 1940s. “By 1958, roughly 35% of fresh produce was prepackaged before it reached the retailer,” The Packer announced. In an era where convenience-packaged TV dinners were mainstream, it’s not surprising that by 1969, 46% of produce was packaged before it made it to the supermarket.

In 1949, tradesmen formed the Produce Prepackaging Association to pool resources and share educational goals.

Wood Crates Fade, Fiberboard Takes Over

Less than a decade later, Bud Antle experimented with vacuum cooling and pioneered shrink-wrapped lettuce in California.

Vacuum cooling allowed packers to quickly pull heat and water from fruits and vegetables immediately after harvest, drastically cutting the risk for microbial contamination and decay. Cooled commodities didn’t have to be iced, so wooden crates that had once been used to support all the ice weren’t necessary. Less spoilage brought longer shelf life. In fact, early tests proved that vacuum cooled lettuce was a higher quality and had a longer shelf life than iced product in wooden crates.

Plus, vacuum-cooled tubes could be moved from one production area to another as the season progressed. Lettuce and oranges were some of the first to consider the switch from wooden crates to cardboard boxes. Boxes made of fiberboard were lighter, more easily broken down, and recyclable.

The first commercial shipments of lettuce started being shipped in corrugated cartons in 1950, The Packer reported. Fiberboard cartons caught on like wildfire.

“By 1954, 75% of all lettuce harvested in the Salinas-Watsonville district was vacuum cooled,” reported The Packer’s 100 Years of Produce: Remembering the 1950s.

Synthetics Take the Lead

World War II brought a turn toward synthetic materials, particularly plastics, in an effort to conserve natural resources. The U.S. began to replace metals and glass in manufacturing, processing and shipping.

In 1952, Sambrailo Packaging worked with Driscoll and others to launch pulp baskets with cling wrap for strawberries. By the 1970s, distributors began to consider synthetic bins, and even pallets, for shipping fruits and vegetables.

Large bins or totes for items like stone fruit and grapes made from synthetic plastic were estimated to be up to 40% lighter than wood crates, and designs eventually accounted for ventilation to minimize loss.

At retail, the plastic clamshell, in particular, would later become an industry standard.

If only my business had...

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 06:09:27 GMT

The last time we reviewed industry answers to The Packer’s 125 survey , we asked a broad question about industry innovations and evolution in the next 25 years .

In this blog post, I will be reviewing industry responses to this question

What one improvement would make your business easier for the next 25 years?

Food safety detection technology;
Transportation and logistics efficiency;
Easier access to labor that does not require so many non-direct salary benefits;
Labor improvements in how our produce is harvested;
We need to automate the process. Also, water as a resource.;
Centralized buying as we had at Safeway which now Albertson’s has dismantled now. Sharing information by far is the most important asset;
Consistency of product from the field to the retailer. If all fruits and vegetables could be mass made with the same consistency it’d be so much easier;
Trucking is the weak link in the produce industry, maybe autonomous truck are the answer;
Better distribution freight options;
Educate the government on what’s really going on, so they can either support the truth or stay out of it completely;
Easier access for foreign labor on U.S. farms;
There is no one improvement but many incremental ones;
More education about careers in agriculture from high school through college to entice young people to want to enter the produce industry;
Consumer confidence and a willingness by the buyer to focus on the sales end of the business, not the cost end. Buying the cheapest should not be the end goal;
Expansion of year-round production;
Eliminate the micromanagement at multiple levels, give buyers more autonomy to make decisions;
Speaking as a career retailer, whose not in retail any longer...if fresh produce is going to maintain its place as the center of the plate when it comes to profitability for retail, retailers are going to have to understand that price is not the only indicator of a “good deal” suppliers must be able to sustain themselves. The price pressures on the supply side is driving more consolidation. With less supplier options, buyers will end up with reduced leverage in that scenario;
Mechanical harvesting;
We need to stop the food safety outbreaks;
Have a human presence regardless of the level of automation. People may not enjoy talking to machines;
Less reliance on manual labor;
Accountability on the regulatory side to better understand growers and producers vs influence of activists;
More automation and more intelligent software;
Equal education efforts from the conventional side of the produce business which would emphasize the safety, quality, variety, sustainability and flavor attributes that represents the vast majority of our business;
As a former grower/ shipper the elimination of back billing;
Manageable labor supply;
Cost of growing;
Better use of technology; and
Supply/Cold Chain improvements for the last mile and retail deliveries.

TK: The importance of labor came through loud and clear in our survey, as did the desire for more receptive government leaders and industry regulators.

Check out other anniversary-themed editorial content and look for more insight from our industry survey in coming blog posts.

If only my business had...

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 06:09:27 GMT

Food safety detection technology;
Transportation and logistics efficiency;
Easier access to labor that does not require so many non-direct salary benefits;
Labor improvements in how our produce is harvested;
We need to automate the process. Also, water as a resource.;
Centralized buying as we had at Safeway which now Albertson’s has dismantled now. Sharing information by far is the most important asset;
Consistency of product from the field to the retailer. If all fruits and vegetables could be mass made with the same consistency it’d be so much easier;
Trucking is the weak link in the produce industry, maybe autonomous truck are the answer;
Better distribution freight options;
Educate the government on what’s really going on, so they can either support the truth or stay out of it completely;
Easier access for foreign labor on U.S. farms;
There is no one improvement but many incremental ones;
More education about careers in agriculture from high school through college to entice young people to want to enter the produce industry;
Consumer confidence and a willingness by the buyer to focus on the sales end of the business, not the cost end. Buying the cheapest should not be the end goal;
Expansion of year-round production;
Eliminate the micromanagement at multiple levels, give buyers more autonomy to make decisions;
Speaking as a career retailer, whose not in retail any longer...if fresh produce is going to maintain its place as the center of the plate when it comes to profitability for retail, retailers are going to have to understand that price is not the only indicator of a “good deal” suppliers must be able to sustain themselves. The price pressures on the supply side is driving more consolidation. With less supplier options, buyers will end up with reduced leverage in that scenario;
Mechanical harvesting;
We need to stop the food safety outbreaks;
Have a human presence regardless of the level of automation. People may not enjoy talking to machines;
Less reliance on manual labor;
Accountability on the regulatory side to better understand growers and producers vs influence of activists;
More automation and more intelligent software;
Equal education efforts from the conventional side of the produce business which would emphasize the safety, quality, variety, sustainability and flavor attributes that represents the vast majority of our business;
As a former grower/ shipper the elimination of back billing;
Manageable labor supply;
Cost of growing;
Better use of technology; and
Supply/Cold Chain improvements for the last mile and retail deliveries.

A Century of Produce: Max E. Brunk and Joe Carcione

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 06:09:32 GMT

The following articles from The Packer’s “A Century of Produce,” were published in 1993.

As The Packer prepares to publish our 125th-anniversary edition later this year, we are posting some of the writing from previous anniversary publications.

The Innovators highlights those who made significant industry developments in The Packer’s second 50 years.

Max E. Brunk

Marketing guru Dr. Max E. Brunk combined his interests in education and produce to become a leading force in marketing through research and public service.

In 35 years with Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., Brunk directed more than 100 marketing studies resulting in advanced degrees for Cornell University students. He worked most closely with the fruit industry of central and western New York.

Brunk’s intense marketing efForts resulted in the development of the polyethylene bag for produce and bakery use. He also acted as a link between the produce industry and many committees whose decisions benefited the industry. Brunk was a charter member of the International Apple Institute’s Marketing Clinic.

At his retirement in 1983, Brunk was presented with the first Golden Apple Award by the Western New York Apple Growers Association. The association, along with the New York Cherry Growers Association, established the Max E. Brunk Scholarship to assist Cornell graduate students conducting fruit marketing research. The Packer named Brunk the 1982 Apple Man of the Year.

Brunk advised producers in a 1983 Packer article that: “The important thing in the future is to learn more about your customer... Customers change constantly ... If you want to enhance the price, do something about the buyer, whether it be the retailer, wholesaler or consumer.”

Joe Carcione

The “Greengrocer,” as he was known throughout the produce industry, Joe Carcione was famous for his candid 90-second, syndicated television segments that aired on 36 stations across the country.

In the segments, which he produced for 14 years in the 1970s and 1980s, Carcione would introduce items about to come onto the retail market and what to expect of them in terms of quality. While some in the industry occasionally were upset at his quality assessments, he always maintained his goal was to educate consumers and increase produce consumption.

Before entering the world of television and radio, Carcione got his start in the produce industry after high school at his father’s produce market. Eventually he went on to own Best Produce Co., in South San Francisco, Calif., which was renamed Carcione’s Fresh Produce Co. Inc., after he died in 1989.

Carcione began his broadcasting career in 1967 after making advertisements for his company. Eventually he was asked to present unpaid grocer segments on KCBS in San Francisco. By 1974, he was asked to do paid spots on television. At his peak, Carcione reached 10 million people via radio and television and wrote three newspaper columns per week, which helped him earn $500,000 a year.

He attributed his success with consumers to his sincerity, saying, “I’m
going to tell the truth... There’s no other way.”

Related Content
A Century of Produce: Frieda Caplan, Minnie Johnston & Sybil Henderson
A Century of Produce: Joseph Brennan, Allen Brock and Joe Brownlow

Food safety forces change

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 06:21:37 GMT

Making sure fresh fruits and vegetables are safe to consume has always been an industry issue, but never more so than in the past generation. The power of mainstream media has brought food safety issues to the forefront at a rapid pace.

Setting the Standards

One of the first moves toward ensuring food safety in produce came in 1996—a government-sponsored committee began a study of the industry’s microbial contamination problems, bringing about Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) guidelines for produce handlers, particularly fresh-cut processors.

But it would be another decade until a truly monumental event forced change.

In early August 2006, a single lot of spinach in California containing E. coli made its way to market, eventually sickening more than 200 people and killing three. Because no one could successfully trace exactly where the tainted greens came from by mid-September, the FDA and the CDC called for Americans to stop eating spinach.

“This incident alerted consumers that the fresh produce industry was not able to do tracebacks in a timely manner,” says Ed Treacy, PMA’s vice president of supply chain and sustainability. Perhaps even worse, the incident greatly affected consumer confidence in fresh produce.

The event would end up having more than a $300 million impact on the industry over the course of many months. Research shows that it took the industry seven years to regain the level of sales and confidence prior to the 2006 spinach E. coli outbreak, Treacy notes.

But the outbreak did spur the industry into action. In 2007, PMA and other industry leaders founded the Center for Produce Safety as a way of backing food safety research. That same year, Western growers formed the California Leafy Green Products Handler Marketing Agreement to develop standards and protocols for food safety practices for that segment of the industry. The mandates, although not required, were adopted by 90% of greens marketers in California and Arizona.

Industry Takes Action

“We knew how to grow and provide healthy food, but in terms of industrywide traceability capabilities, we were just starting,” Treacy says.

In 2008, PMA, United Fresh, CPMA and GS1 launched the Produce Traceability Initiative (PTI)—an effort to formalize and determine seven milestones to implementing case-level traceability in the produce industry.

“Growers had systems of tracing back product to fields,” says Bob Whitaker, chief science and technology officer for PMA. “The problem was everyone had their own system. I remember from being in the business myself that we had a useful and accurate system that allowed me to know the lot, harvest day, which plant the item was bagged in, date processed, which line it was on. But the minute it left our door, no one else knew what that meant.”

The PTI’s seven-step program, released in 2010, clearly outlined a way for the industry to implement universal case-level identification of fresh fruits and vegetables using a common language. Cases of product were assigned Global Trade Item Numbers (GTIN) thanks to technology by GS1 US, a nonprofit that led the way in barcode technology in the 1990s.

This highly specified level of identification did for cases what UPCs did for individual items, allowing each case of produce to be tracked individually back to the distributor, repacker or grower. The plethora of data that could be embedded about each load—including commodity, lot and batch number, grade, country of origin, package type (blister pack vs. plastic-wrapped tray, etc.)—was important. Labels could also track whether an item was conventionally grown, greenhouse grown, hydroponic, organic, fly free, or using IPM.

Rules and Regulations

In the meantime, Congress got to work writing laws that would affect the U.S. food supply. In January 2011, the Food Safety Modernization Act became law, shifting the focus from a reactionary stance to a preventable approach to food safety.

But, unfortunately, in September, a listeria outbreak in cantaloupes in Colorado killed more than 30 people. While the loss of human life was significant, ramifications of the event were even greater. For the first time, retailers were successfully sued by families involved in the outbreak—in the past, it was growers, packers and shippers that bore the financial effects. Although “hold harmless” agreements and recall insurance can protect against such measures, in this case those things did not cover costs, Treacy says. Industry giants Kroger and Walmart wrote checks in excess of $10 million to settle lawsuits brought on by families affected by this outbreak.

That got the industry’s attention.

Walmart and Kroger had been active in the development of PTI, Treacy says, but major retailers had not yet made it a requirement. The listeria lawsuit, which was still ongoing in May 2013, was a game changer.

“We had approximately a 25% adoption of PTI before May 2013,” Treacy says. Walmart gave its suppliers until the end of 2013 to comply with the standards. January 2014 became a defining moment—when Walmart refused one shipment because it wasn’t PTI labeled. “Within days they [Walmart] had near 100% compliance,” Treacy says. Almost overnight the industry had 50-55% compliance industrywide, he notes.

Today, nearly six years later, Treacy estimates that the fresh produce industry is at about 60-65% implementation of PTI. Of the 6 billion cases of produce that are handled in the U.S., about 3.6 billion cases have a standardized case label put on them today, he says.

Traceability issues (or a lack thereof) have not gone away. In the spring of 2018, an E. coli outbreak linked to romaine from Yuma, Ariz., sickened nearly 200 people and killed five. A second incident involving romaine from California over Thanksgiving weekend continued to worry consumers.

Instead of enacting a recall in the fall of 2018, the FDA issued an “advisory.” This move was huge—because buyers can’t purchase “advisory” insurance, companies with romaine already in the supply chain for the holiday weekend were forced to face big losses—on one of the busiest food preparation weekends of the year.

“As we’ve seen with romaine and other product recalls, without a traceability system in place massive recalls take place for an entire commodity sector. Further, grower/shippers are prevented from shipping more product until clearance is given from government authorities,” says Doug Grant, executive vice president and COO of The Oppenheimer Group, who also serves as PTI Leadership Council co-chairman.

“This sounds odd, but the glimmer of hope is in the pain the industry’s been going through,” Whitaker says. “The glimmer of hope is that there’s been enough pain to capture the attention of retail and foodservice companies to look at it [digital blockchain traceability] and say ‘it may cost us to do this up front, but everyone has a shared burden and a shared interest.’”

Digital Plan in Place

Change is coming. Treacy and United Fresh’s Jennifer McEntire have been working with the FDA to develop a digital template for the fresh produce industry that will greatly assist the FDA during future traceback investigations.

The new endeavor will be an update to the guidance document on sharing data during a traceback that was created by the PTI Implementation working group. The template captures the key data elements at critical tracking events that the FDA will need during times of a foodborne illness outbreak like lot number, date, quantity, when it was shipped, when received, when used as an ingredient or consumed, or when it was disposed of. The template was being tested and piloted for leafy greens by retailers like Wegman’s and Associated Wholesale Grocers in the summer of 2019.

Wegman’s—upon the first trial of the template—was able to trace romaine shipments between 12 different suppliers in an average of 2 hours and 11 minutes, Treacy says. “Once it gets integrated, companies will be able to do it in minutes,” he says.

“Many grower-shippers have implemented PTI case labels and are ready to share data electronically,” Grant says. “At this point, only a handful of retailers are implementing PTI, notably Walmart, who has taken a leadership position. The next game changer will be when other retailers adopt PTI at some level.”

“It creates awareness and a bit of momentum—moving to supply chain transparency. Traceability is part of that transparency. Consumers want to know exactly where their food is coming from,” Whitaker says.

One thing is certain: traceability will continue to be a hot topic well into the next generation.

Related content:
Research looks at canal sediment-pathogen risks
Three E. coli outbreaks have a Salinas romaine grower in common
FDA provides flexibility to start routine inspections on small farms

Growing further faster

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 06:21:46 GMT

Trucks Open Trade Options

Open-bed trucks used to haul war gear caught the attention of farmers in the 1910s. The need for food overseas and problems with shipping perishables via rail got people thinking seriously about using trucks for agriculture.

“At the start of the war in 1914, only 24,900 trucks were produced in the U.S.,” noted The Packer’s 100 Years of Produce: Remembering the 1910s. “At the war’s end in 1918, the total was 227,250.” In cities, trucks replaced horses as the main vehicle for transporting product from railyards to wholesale markets and from markets to retail stores. In growing regions, trucks were found to be more beneficial in traversing marginal roads than wagons.

World War I also helped to precipitate the interest in agriculture on a consumer level. Because of a huge loss of farm workers in Europe (who had been recruited for the battlefield), the U.S. government beseeched Americans to grow their own fresh fruits and vegetables at home so that commercial production could be sent overseas to feed struggling families.

Families whose plots produced more than they could eat could extend their income by “truck farming” (selling excess product, theoretically from a truck). In those days, “10 acres would be a large truck farm, and 2 or 3 acres properly managed, with good markets, will bring a fair living to an ordinary family,” reported the 1908 Yearbook of the USDA.

“The truck instantly gave farmers greater marketing mobility,” reported The Packer’s 100 Years of Produce:

Remembering the 1920s. “The farmer and country shipper were able to assemble loads for shipment directly to processor or wholesaler. Buyers from processors to wholesalers often came to the local market to buy in truckload lots. All this forever changed the patterns of farm marketing and altered traditional crop patterns.”

Finding Ways Into Far-reaching Areas

Because trucks could go just about anywhere, farmers became more specialized in their equipment, and mechanized tractors were born.

“In the late 1800s, there had been a few steam tractor models built and sold. Even by 1905, there were only six tractor makers in the entire United States. By 1920, there were more than 160 tractor makers selling hundreds of different models powered by a variety of fuels. A year later there were 186 different companies and the number of tractors on farms approached 200,000,” reports Wessel’s Living History Farm, York, Neb., in “Farming in the 1920s.”

Mechanized tractors would obviously become the technology of the future. They didn’t have to be fed and watered like horses, they could cover more ground in less time, and they weren’t affected by extreme temperatures
like animals.

Farmers could take land dedicated to raising plow animals and raise crops on the same space, maximizing land value.

“The increased use of mechanical power on farms has influenced agriculture more than any other factor during the present century,” reports Agriculture 1950: “Changes in Agriculture, 1900 to 1950.” “The use of the motortruck has made possible the production of many kinds of farm products, particularly perishable ones in areas remote from market. A synchronized system of marketing and distributing farm products has made it possible for farmers, with the aid of motortrucks, to supply food to consumers hundreds of miles away.”

Growers needing to ship less-than-railcar loads of fruits and vegetables were at a disadvantage in the early 1910s.

They faced higher fees for less-than-carload lots and product had to be unloaded from rail cars and transported to the local market anyway. Trucks offered much more flexibility; trucks hauling fruits and vegetables could quote door-to-door short-haul prices. Long hauls were still mostly done by railroads, which had the time advantage.

As a result of all these changes, the produce business morphs from a homegrown endeavor to a technological one, evolving from a largely local/regional industry to one that spans the nation.

In 1914, with the opening of the Panama Canal, the door of opportunity opened further, paving the way for international trade with Europe from the Western U.S. on an even wider scale.

Retailers Create Monumental Change

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 06:21:46 GMT

Chain Stores Change the Supply Chain

A&P’s new format stores were both easy and inexpensive to build. They were simpler to stock because they offered fewer items than a traditional grocery. A&P slashed profit margins, and the company sought to move high volumes of perishables and groceries to make up the price difference. Plus, these “economy” stores could fit in any neighborhood—propelling them to the forefront of what would become the “chain store” concept.

In 1900, there were only 300 chain stores nationwide. Just a quarter-century later, that number jumped to 10,000, and by 1930 there were chain stores reported in all 48 states.

Wholesalers hated it. In 100 Years of Produce: Remembering the 1930s, The Packer reported, “The big problem, amid the woes of the Depression, was that the chains were buying better, stronger and sometimes cheaper. Their influence was pervasive.”

In fact, The Packer reported one monumental point in 1929 when Safeway Stores Inc. took over the operation of its own fresh fruit and vegetable markets, and 700 buyers went out of the market overnight.

Independent retailers also felt the pinch and turned to wholesale grocers to secure their position in high-quality perishables. While this gave them buying power, groups lamented that they didn’t have access to the quality of fresh fruits and vegetables that chain stores did.

Self-Service Becomes the Wave of the Future

A brand-new Southern grocery store chain—Piggly Wiggly—offered another revelation in retailing: self-service.

While A&P eyed store operating costs, Piggly Wiggly focused on labor. Cutting out store clerks shaved costs even more, and, although it took some getting used to, consumers learned to fill their own orders—and liked it.

“[Piggly Wiggly’s founder] redesigned food shopping, methodically arranging things in order to appeal to how customers shopped,” noted Time.com article “The Surprising Way a Supermarket Changed the World.” It gave consumers a choice, something that they hadn’t had much of before at a grocery store.

The timeliness of war also helped to promote this effort. When the American labor force joined the military efforts, grocery stores lost store clerks, so a self-service option worked.

Size Begins to Matter

A&P pioneered the economy chain store using a small-scale format; others began to look at doing the opposite: large or “super” markets.

A manager for Kroger Co., Michael Cullen (who started as a clerk at A&P), envisioned full-service stores of giant proportions, literally, including areas for fresh produce, bakery, meat and groceries in a format convenient for shoppers. (Before the 1930s, consumers had to visit separate places for perishables—a fruit stand, butcher, baker, milk man.) His plan—which he outlined in a letter to Kroger directors—involved lowering markups and making up for them by quickly moving high volumes of products, including perishables.

“The fruit and vegetable department of a store of this kind would be a gold mine,” Cullen noted in a letter to Kroger executives in 1929. “This department alone may make a net profit of 7% due to the tremendous turnover we would have after selling out daily and not throwing half the profit away, which is done at present time in 25% of the chain stores throughout the land.”

Kroger didn’t share his enthusiasm, so Cullen quit and a year later opened his visionary format store, King Kullen Grocery Co., in Queens, N.Y. Advertising the store as “the world’s greatest price wrecker” drew crowds of consumers, and just six years later when Cullen died, he’d expanded from a single store to 15.

The first storefront to use the “supermarket” moniker came in 1933 when Kroger’s former president William Albers opened Albers Super Market in Cincinnati.

“Supermarkets made it possible to achieve economies of scale at a lower cost to consumers,” notes Leslie G. Sarasin, president and chief executive officer of the Food Marketing Institute, on Forbes.com. “Americans were able to spend more of their disposable income on cars, education, clothing. They effectively created America’s middle class.”

Industry insight: Karen Caplan

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 06:21:37 GMT

As I think back to my first produce convention, which I attended while in college (in the late 1970s), I realized that there were only three women at that convention in San Francisco: my mother, Frieda Caplan; Sybil Henderson (who wrote mini cookbooks on veggies and did TV segments promoting fresh produce); and me. When I joined my mom’s business after college, I’m pretty sure I was the only twenty-something girl going to the LA Produce Market at 4 a.m. daily.

Very slowly, I started to notice more women getting involved in the industry. But I found most women were in support roles. HR, accounting, marketing and public relations. There were very few women in sales, and definitely no women who owned a company (except for my mom).

Other produce companies would refer women to my mom because women couldn’t get jobs in produce sales. Ask Tonya Antle. She was from a produce family, lived in Southern California and wanted to get into the business. Every company she approached referred her to Frieda’s. We hired her on the spot!

About 25 years ago, you could see momentum building. There were more and more women in sales. And I’ll never forget meeting Conchita Espinosa from Fru-Veg in Miami and Gloria Polanco of Frutesa in Guatemala–they both founded and ran their own companies. That was amazing back then! It was a long time before there were any women as directors of produce at retail. But these role models were my inspiration for launching Women in Produce in 1993, a reception to be held at both United’s and PMA’s annual conventions to provide a place for women to network.

What is so unique to produce sales is that if you have a product of value that a buyer can make money on, they don’t care if you are male or female. Black or white. Young or old. If you’re smart and can show them how they can make money selling your product, you can make the sale. Smarts is what counts.

And that’s what women have brought to our industry. Women tend to be detailed and relationship-oriented, and they still represent the vast majority of consumers—women. It always made the most sense to me that a woman sales person, buyer or retailer, chef or wholesaler would think like a consumer. And what a competitive edge that would be.

So, thank you to the men who had the foresight in our industry to give opportunities to women. Their foresight opened doors and windows. And now we have balanced teams and working groups.

I think you will agree that it’s a lot more fun working in our industry now. And what a great example we are setting for millenials and Gen Zs who are looking to get into the food and agriculture business. Our little old ag business is looking pretty progressive!

Remembering the days of the produce huckster truck

Fri, 23 Sep 2022 20:51:37 GMT

I talked today with Peter Machi, long-time sales and purchasing representative with Consumer Fresh Produce Inc., Pittsburgh, Pa.

Peter is one of those “unforgettable characters” in the business, having navigated decades in the fresh produce trade in days that were not at all like our current times.

He told me the story of his start in the produce business 60 years ago, when he was a 10-year old helping out on a produce huckster truck, a type of mobile produce stand that went from neighborhood to neighborhood.

Peter sent a picture of a replica huckster truck he built a few years ago. The replica truck is now used in parades and fundraisers. More on my conversation with Peter in a coming post.

----

My conversation with Peter Machi reminds me of the history that The Packer has collected and published over the years. In fact, we are now in the process of putting together the 125th-anniversary issue of The Packer.

Below is an excerpt from The Packer’s Century of Produce, published in 1993 - a profile of two of the “100 who made a difference.”

Andrew and Stephen D’Arrigo

Andrew and Stephen D’Arrigo, in 1922, founded the D’Arrigo Bros. Co., which was the first to commercially grow pack broccoli in the United States. They also introduced Pascal celery to California.
The company also was first to successfully employ brand identification for its produce products.
Andrew D’Arrigo and his brother Stephen left their homeland of Messina, Italy, in 1904. After World War I, in which they fought with U.S. forces, they entered the grape juice business. Andrew remained on the East Coast while Stephen supervised shipments from the West Coast. In 1922, the business officially became the D’Arrigo Bros. Co., specializing in a variety of fruits and vegetables favored by Italian Americans.
Broccoli, a foreign commodity to U.S. consumers at the time, became their greatest hit. The brothers developed their own broccoli seed lines from seeds sent by their father in Italy. In developing their Andy Boy label, still in use on all D’Arrigo premium products in 1993, they used a photograph of Stephen’s 2-year-old son.
Stephen D’Arrigo served as board chairman of the Western Growers Association in 1947. He worked with Canadian industry and government officials to try and re-establish an Arbitration Board to settle industry disputes between Canada and the United States.
In 1993, D’Arrigo Bros. was a full-service, vertically integrated produce firm farming more than 14,000 acres in California and Arizona and occupying 17 units in the New York Terminal Market. The company continues to grow on both coasts under the management of second and third generation D’Arrigo’s.

TK: Thanks to the many who have already filled out The Packer’s 125-year anniversary survey. If you haven’t done yet, follow the link and please take the time to answer the 11 questions. Thanks.

Blaming it on the fax; the biggest change agents in the past 25 years

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 06:08:47 GMT

The Packer’s 125th-anniversary edition is fast approaching. We have enjoyed posting previous anniversary edition coverage and also have begun to post new content for the Packer 125 issue (see Mike Aiton’s wonderful column here )

In addition, I wanted to review more industry responses from our Packer 125 survey:
Tonight, let’s review responses to question no. 3:

Technologically, what do you see as the biggest driver for change in the industry over the past 25 years?

Here are the results:

The use of the fax machine;
Expanded food safety and traceability systems;
Advancement of technology;
Controlled atmosphere packaging;
The evolution of the current packing technologies is delivering a consistently better piece of fruit because we are able to detect so much morel
Greenhouses by far have raised the bar on quality and increased production;
Plastic-Chemicals;
Water saving production;
Labor costs / AI / IOT;
Foodborne illness outbreaks and nutritional value;
Plant genetics and food safety improvements;
Packaging as a catalyst for convenience (and shelf life);
Electronic transactions from shipping point through the front end, automatic replenishment; ,
Improved methods of transportation and product handling;
Elimination of chemical usage and conversion to IPM;
Ability to trace back more quickly when product is recalled;
Smartphone technology, connected 24/7 and access to all this data;
DNA testing, increased illness reporting that has linked illnesses to outbreaks, changing the perceived and real food safety landscape;
Data-enabled decision-making;
AI, IoT, distant cooking ready to cook meals, programmable cooking;
New Tech such as AI;
Automation of Packinghouses and cold storages;
Packaging, specially with things such as clamshell berries, pre-bagged grapes, source-wrapped lettuce, and smaller packages (i.e. 5 lb potatoes v. 10# bags);
Computers- internet;
Digital scanning and food auditing that allows traceability of product from farm to retailers.

TK: In my view, it is hard to overestimate the importance of packaging/convenience, but I love the old school answer “fax machine.” While held in relatively small regard now, there was a time when the fax machine was top of mind in the industry, and not in a good way.

Here is a March 1994 story about the concerns about the fax machine, which by that time had become common.

Price outweighs other factors Shippers blame fax machine for declining loyalty to firms.
By Dan Balaban
Staff Writer
A recent survey by Cornell University showed buyers ranked consistent quality, adequate supply and reputation of the shipper as the top three factors in their purchasing decisions.
From what many Florida shippers are hearing, the top three factors seem to be price, price and price.
The shippers say that while buyers for retail chain stores and other companies want dependable quality and year-round supply, they are more price-conscious than ever.
``All those factors are important as long as price is not a penny higher,’’ said Alan Levy, a 30-year produce man and president of Great American Farms Inc., Pompano Beach, Fla.
Shippers blame the fax machine and what they see as an increasing lack of loyalty on the part of buyers. Shippers say buyers are gathering as many prices as they can, usually by fax, and then going with the low bidder.
``We spend half our day quoting prices to customers,’’ complained Belle Glade broker and shipper George Towell of Fantastic Produce. ``There’s no explanation as to why the price is so, and they automatically go to the cheaper price.’’
``The fax machine is the ruination of the business,’’ said Paul DiMare, president of tomato grower-shipper DiMare Inc. ``It’s happened in the past five years. There’s too much information, too many faxes, too much disloyalty to suppliers.’’

A look back: The rise of refrigeration

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 06:19:49 GMT

The obvious appeal of fresh produce is just that—its freshness. The downside of harvesting and hauling fresh produce is just that—its freshness. At the turn of the 20th century, finding ways to keep fruits and vegetables in their just-harvested state for as long as possible was the key to advancing the industry.

“Refrigerated” Rail

In the early days, ice was the answer. This natural coolant allowed the produce trade (as well as the meat and dairy industries) to expand further from where product was produced, building demand for fresh items.

“A refrigerator car of the late-1800s could only travel about 250 to 400 miles before it would need re-icing,” notes a report by the Whippany Railway Museum in New Jersey.

“Refer cars” were filled with blocks of ice on each end that were insulated with materials like sawdust or cow hair. Open false ceilings at the top of the rail car’s interior allowed for circulation, and fans blew across the ice blocks to create an air-conditioning of sorts.

At icing stations built strategically along the rail lines, employees would climb a ladder to the top of a rail car and re-ice the load from above by opening a small trap door. “It took 9,000 to 11,000 pounds of ice to fill a car’s bunkers, and each car on a transcontinental trip would require several stops to be re-iced,” the museum notes.

As icing stations cropped up along the rail lines nationwide, the concept of “regional” produce began to take hold. “Consider Georgia peaches, California grapes, peaches, pears, plums, apples and citrus, Washington and Oregon apples, pears, cherries, and raspberries, and of course, Florida citrus. The increasingly widespread distribution of fresh foods expanded markets and helped to create healthier diets of meat, produce, eggs, butter, milk, cheese and fish,” notes an article titled “The Impact of Refrigeration” from History-Magazine.com.

Logistics Take Over

In 1907, the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific railways debuted the Pacific Fruit Express, dedicated to perishables. The service was reported to have 41,000 ice bunker cars in operation during its heyday.

By the 1920s-1930s, advances in mechanization moved the progress toward motorized cooling technologies. In the late 1930s, Frederick Jones created mobile compressor units that would allow cooling of loads (rail or truck) anywhere. “Jones’ technology revolutionized the distribution of food and other perishables. It made fresh produce available anywhere in the country year-round, changing Americans’ eating habits,” reports www.invent.org. Eventually, Jones and his partner Joseph Numero would go on to found Thermo King, a $13 billion global business today.

Refrigeration at Home

Thanks to new technology, consumers who once used root cellars to extend the shelf life of fruits and vegetables upgraded to ice boxes in the early 20th century.
“By the 1920s, the household refrigerator was an essential piece of kitchen furniture,” History-Magazine.com reported.

“In 1921, 5,000 mechanical refrigerators were manufactured in the U.S. Ten years later that number grew past one million and just six years later, nearly six million.”

The ability to cool things changed the way consumers shopped and ate. They could go to the store more frequently and pick up fresh items that hadn’t been available in earlier decades.

The Breakthrough of Cold Storage

On the production side, cold storage was the third key to driving the industry forward in the early 1900s. The ability to pick fruits at their peak freshness and store them in that state revolutionized produce shelf life.

First perfected by the dairy industry in the 1890s, the use of cold storage facilities to hold product opened doors for apples, onions and potatoes. Consumers knew enough to keep apples fresh by storing them in the underground “potato cellar” in the 1800s. Commercially, apple shippers were the first to jump on the bandwagon; 2% of the total apple crop reportedly went into cold storage in 1900.

A more far-reaching effect of the cold rooms, however, was what they meant for marketing.

Because most fruits and vegetables could not be stored at the point of origin, cold storage facilities—particularly in central Midwestern locations like Chicago and Kansas City—allowed grower-shippers to keep excessive amounts of produce off the market and maximize market fluctuations. This led to the trend toward speculative buying, opening up a whole new way to sell.

“In short, being able to store part of a crop and market it later meant control,” summarized The Packer’s 100 Years of Produce: Remembering the 1900s. This type of thinking would change produce buying and selling in the decades to come.

A Century of Produce: The Rising Importance of Temperature

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 06:07:18 GMT

The following article from The Packer’s “A Century of Produce,” was published in 1993.

As The Packer prepares to publish our 125th-anniversary edition later this year, we are posting some of the writing from previous anniversary publications.

Robert Kasmire writes of the positive impacts made in the produce industry from the development of temperature control.

The Rising Importance of Temperature

By Robert Kasmire

When one considers the many developments in the allied and technical fields that have contributed to advances in the produce industry during the past century, it boggles my mind to select only the major ones. Here are my suggestions for the outstanding ones:

> Recognition of the overwhelming importance of correct product temperature in maintaining product quality, along with the development of effective refrigeration systems to achieve desired temperatures, has to be the most important development. This includes advancing from cooling and storing in cool or primitive cold rooms to highly sophisticated, mechanically refrigerated systems, as well as developing and perfecting specific cooling methods, equipment and facilities to accommodate the cooling requirements of the countless types of produce and ornamentals we consume.

Hydrocooling produce was first recorded in 1921 when celery was cooled by immersion or sprayed with cold water in Sanford, Fla. Commercial manufacturing of hydrocoolers began in the late 1940s. Stericooler Union Ice Co., Clarksville Machine Works and Durand-Wayland Inc. were early manufacturers. Virtually all of the early hydrocoolers were ice-fired, with the water being cooled by contact with ice. Advances in design and components resulted in the carefully engineered, energy efficient, mechanically refrigerated hydrocoolers used in the 1990s.

Vacuum cooling, which uses a product’s heat to evaporate surface moisture, was developed to provide faster tobacco curing. It first was used commercially for cooling leafy vegetables in 1948.

The original installations were fixed installations and used steamjet evacuators. Vacuum coolers in the early 1990s used mechanical vacuum pumps, energy efficient compressors and sensing instruments that allowed operators to closely monitor and control the atmospheric pressure in the vacuum tube, enabling them to cool vegetables to just above their freezing points.

Recognizing that some vegetables -- celery, leaf lettuces and spinach -- wilted from the required amount of water loss from vacuum cooling led to the development of Hydro Vac cooling by Western Precooling Co., Fremont, Calif., in 1975. This process made possible successful vacuum cooling of more sensitive vegetables.

Hugo and Floyd Miller of Western Precooling and Gene Larsen of Mobile Products Services were the principal visionaries in developing the Hydro Vac process. In the beginning, the installations were fixed, but cooling advanced to one in which at least 95 percent of the coolers were capable of being moved to two or more locations annually, enabling shippers to cool vegetables in different districts as seasons progressed.

Forced-air or pressure cooling was the most widely used method in the early 1990s.

The concept for forced-air cooling was developed in about 1954 by Rene Guillou, an agricultural engineer at the University of California-Davis. Guillou recognized that creating a difference in air pressure across opposing sides of a vented package of produce caused the cooling air to flow directly over the product. This resulted in faster and more uniform cooling than room cooling.

Guillou demonstrated forced-air cooling to grape grower-shippers in Lodi, Calif., in 1955. The first commercial forced-air cooler was designed and developed by Diven Meredith, a mechanical engineer who recognized the adaptability of forced-air cooling for all kinds of produce. His company, Meredith and Simpson Co., Indio, Calif., built the state’s first forced-air cooler for grapes in Coachella Valley. A few years later, the first pressure cooler for strawberries was installed in Oxnard, Calif.

In the 1990s, forced-air cooling was the most widely used method for cooling produce and ornamentals. The cooling industry represented a capital investment of more than $1 billion and had an operations’ budget of several hundred million dollars worldwide.

>Other major developments in produce temperature management have been made in the fields of transport refrigeration and in wholesale, retail and foodservice handling of fresh produce.

Refrigerated marine containers and highway and trailer-on-flat-car trailers in the 1990s represented years of research and development in materials, design and construction advancements.

Uniform produce temperatures were being maintained within one or two degrees of a desired transit temperature.

The development of large-scale refrigeration systems with more expansive evaporator coils helped provide distribution cold rooms with higher relative humidities for maintaining produce freshness. This advantage also was achieved in installations using Filacells, filaments plus cells, the primary component in the HumiFresh system.

Specialized engineering firms, such as Food Plant Engineering Inc., also have made major contributions toward the better wholesale and distribution of produce. The need for and benefits from more careful handling of produce caused improvements in harvesting and packinghouse operations, packing, and packaging.

We progressed from bulge packing in large wooden containers and bulk products in jute bags to individually wrapped products in smaller standardized wood boxes, crates, lugs and flats in the 1990s.

Then came the slow but very visible change to fiberboard boxes (cartons) of seemingly countless designs, shapes, sizes and construction. Most of the time, the change was for economic reasons -- less expensive packing and/or packages and increased output -- but some changes were made because the carton provided better protection, including more effective cooling and product immobilization during transit.

Virtually all the research and development to improve carton manufacture, construction, design and assembly was done by the paper and carton manufacturing industry.

Design advances to accommodate uses specific to commodity needs were joint efforts by the carton and produce industry and often involved cooperative research groups. The change from hand stacking, loading and unloading to unitized handling, mostly on pallets, has been another example of progress. However, it stopped short of the financial benefits that could have been obtained from an industrywide adoption of Project Metrification, Unitization and Modularization’s proposed guidelines.

The development of plastic films with uniform and specific gas transfer capabilities greatly benefited produce packaging of consumer units of precut or lightly processed vegetables. Increased retention of product freshness increased consumer acceptance of prepackaged products. The large increase in sales and use of prepackaged salad mixes and lightly processed vegetables greatly benefited the foodservice industry.

>The development of modified- and controlled-atmosphere packaging, storage and transportation was another outstanding feat for the industry. From the discovery by two English scientists that some fruits benefited from CA storage to the 1990s commercial use of highly sophisticated, modified- and controlled-atmosphere systems, steady progress was made in this area.

Much of private sector research and development in the United States was done by the Whirlpool Corp. in the early 1960s. Some of this paralleled controlled- and modified-atmosphere research at various universities and at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Results were promising and indicated opportunities for commercial development and application. But lack of adequate commodity response information to various conditions suggested the need for a cautious approach.

Whirlpool workers proposed and tested a system that kept lettuce and bananas under CA conditions from shipping point through retail. In supermarkets, consumers would select products from specially designed controlled-atmosphere chests. However, the cost-to-benefits ratio for such a system was not favorable and too many handling and technical problems existed to prevent its realization.

However, by 1966, three major corporations, Occidental Petroleum, Union Carbide and Whirlpool Corp., had developed their own systems for providing modified-atmosphere transport services. Others followed.

A major weakness in this movement was a tendency to promote, and sometimes even to promise, more than what was attainable. Whirlpool, however, recognized the limitations and in 1966 entered into a 50-50 joint venture with Bruce Church Inc., one of the United States’ largest vegetable growing and shipping firms, to form TransFresh Inc.

Jim Lugg, research and development director for the Church firm, became president of the new enterprise. Under his leadership, TransFresh continued to progress, continually researching commodity and technology problems and developing solutions. In addition to its own and cooperative research, TransFresh funded extensive university research of modified atmosphere and controlled atmosphere to provide information on product behavior and response to various atmospheres and conditions.

In 1973, Bruce Church’s heirs purchased Whirlpools’ 50 percent of the venture and formed Fresh International, the parent company of TransFresh. By 1992, more than 70 percent of California’s out-of-state fresh strawberry shipments were protected by the TransFresh-developed Tectrol modified atmospheres and pallet bag technology. More than 58 percent of Florida’s out-of-state berry shipments were similarly shipped that year. In the early 1990s, modified-atmosphere technology had a major role in the rapid expansion of the precut and lightly processed vegetable operations. Large-scale international shipments of asparagus, avocados, mangoes, cantaloupe and other commodities were possible by controlled-atmosphere technology and systems for marine containers.

Controlled-atmosphere storage technology progressed rapidly in several countries. Improved design and construction of CA storage facilities, the development of technology for monitoring and maintaining low ethylene concentrations and high relative humidities, and the ability to maintain proper concentrations of oxygen and carbon dioxide in storage advanced this development.

Its benefits greatly extended the shipping and marketing services for apples, pears and other commodities, and made it possible for consumers to enjoy the products almost year-round.

>The development of useful and meaningful grades and standards for most fresh produce commodities occurred slowly but steadily for decades. Cooperative efforts between industry and government have benefited the produce industry and the public.

The extensive research and educational programs of post-harvest handling and physiology contributed significantly to the more visible progress made in the industry during the last 100 years. This work was conducted by the USDA, universities, foreign government agencies, private companies and corporations. The early post-harvest work by the United Fruit Co. provided the basis for the 1990s banana handling technology. Numerous commodity advisory boards provided liaison and guidance with public research and educational agencies to demonstrate the need for specific research or educational programs. These boards subsequently funded requested programs and helped extend results to the fresh produce industry.

What consumer trends will drive produce demand for the next 25 years?

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 06:08:03 GMT

The Packer’s 125th-anniversary edition is coming out later this year, and it has been fun collecting material for that publication and publishing articles from past anniversary editions .

One of the tools we used was an industry survey asking readers 11 questions about the past, present and future of the fresh produce trade. The survey is still open, and readers are welcome to weigh in with their perspectives.

Here is one of the questions from the survey, and answers from our readers in response:

What consumer trends will drive sales and demand for produce in the next 25 years?

Food as medicine;
Organics, clean ingredients, imported new exotics/new ethnic menus/recipes;
Flavor and convenience;
Transparency: Consumers demanding to know more about the companies they buy from; this is inter-connected with sustainability;
Omni-Channel Experience: evaluating the consumer journey and their relationships to brands;
Reasonable cost of product:
I think health trends will continue to drive sales and demand, as well as new varieties and new items;
I think the growth of items like mango and avocado will continue to spike up as more and more of the population is enjoying these items. I could also see a ‘back to basics’ effort at some point, especially with the continued income disparity leading to more classic items like baked potatoes being in vogue;
I believe it will be the demand for more organically grown produce as well as sustainability. On sustainability, I think it will have to be real facts not the stories the industry tells to make consumers feel good. The organic revolution will really take hold when more is grown and prices are in line with conventionally grown produce;
Health and wellness;
Getting younger consumers on board;
Keeping farmers in business;
Year-round availability / from a local source (never before possible);
Transparency of product source;
Ease of use and flavor improvements;
Taste/Flavor;
Health Benefits/Food as Medicine;
Convenience (Time Saving);
Convenience, flavor, healthful eating choices, and preparation ideas and suggestions;
Demand for organic/local produce;
Value-added and packaged produce;
As much as I want to say convenience, I believe we are just at the tip of the hyper localization trend. Consumer demand, I believe will lead to more food will be grown closer to the end-user than ever before in the western hemisphere, Convenience will still drive demand, but sustainability will become more influential in demand, primarily for millennials but others will come on board;
Taste, versatility, convenience, sustainability, well-being;
E-commerce and home delivery of fruits and vegetables;
Convenience, search for new flavors and tastes;
Connectivity of brand/farm/grower to what drives the consumer, an emotional or deeper connecting from the brand to the consumer beyond the surface will drive sales;
Flavor and quality;
Culinary, food networks focus on flavor, variety, and exposure to eating more fresh produce;
Locally grown;
The continuing trend of healthy eating of fresh produce.

TK: What do you think? Readers mentioned organic, sustainability, home delivery and online grocery, hyper-local food and the familiar themes of flavor, convenience, and healthy eating. Are we missing any obvious (or not) answers? Hop online and take the survey if you have something to add.

Biggest changes in produce packaging? Let us count the ways

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 06:12:25 GMT

I have discussed the results of an online survey we put out in conjunction with The Packer’s 125th-anniversary publication several times in this space. There are a couple of questions to review yet, and today the topic is packaging.

We posed this question to the industry:

What are the biggest changes in produce packaging in the last 25 years?

And the industry responses....

The change from bulk produces to marketing produce as branded and packaged;
Longer shelf life and compostability/biodegradation;
Clamshells designed specifically for the products they hold and RPC and pooled pallets;
More work needs to be done :(;
Control with quality control in getting the consumers fair warning when there is a problem;
The explosion of packaging from primarily bulk items to everything being in some sort of packaging. This includes innumerable niche items also, that you might have only seen at a local farm stand;
Too much of it and now it will be eliminated greatly to the benefit of all;
Clamshells, Breathing packages, Tectrol;
Year round availability, Food safety, Water (clean sources and conservation);
Modified atmosphere packaging;
Measuring respiration rates and designing optimal packaging for each product;
More product than ever being prepackaged and meeting with great success due to the improvements in the materials in use;
Mechanization and labor savings in the growing and packing operations;
Some movement to plastic reduction/elimination;;
Innovation of retail packaged salads;
Breatheable technology which has increased shelf life thru managing respiration rates, giving retailer confidence in being able to sell more without increasing shrink;
Gas permeable packages and giving the fresh cut business in both fruit and veggies a place to grow;
Smart films and packaging that enable greater use of precut, convenience items. Increase in packaging overall, leading to greater ability to brand and market;
Bar codes, plastic dependency, GMO Vs. Natural/organic;
Sustainability and use of recyclable products that may offer added benefits such as antimicrobials embedded in the packaging material;
Corrugated cartons;
Clamshells for berries and tomatoes, grape/cherry bags, source-wrapped/ packaged lettuce and celery;
Autobaggers;
A greater variety of package sizes giving the consumer more choices leading to greater chance of sales;
Use of PLU stickers to identify varieties at check out;
Getting rid of all the plastic!; and
Modified atmosphere packaging.

TK: Is there “too much” packaging or have we only just begun? The melding of convenience and environmental attributes seems certain to accelerate in the years ahead.

See coverage of other survey questions in previous blog posts.

Pick three - changes coming in the next 25 years

Nothing new under the sun? Not so fast, my friend

What is the future of produce wholesalers? Survey says..

If only my business had...

Industry weighs in on changes to come in retailing

What’s the most important industry development?

Blaming it on the fax; the biggest change agents in the past 25 years

The power of one among many

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 06:12:32 GMT

How can we identify the power of an individual within any sphere of human activity?

How can we separate a person’s role in life from the era in which they lived?

Surely it is a difficult task, but certain individuals attract attention in the way they approach problems, engage with people, and articulate solutions.

As part of our industry survey related to The Packer’s 125th-anniversary edition, we have asked a number of questions looking at industry progress and future prospects.

Here are a few blog posts that review those poll questions and industry answers:

Biggest changes in produce packaging? Let us count the ways

Pick three - changes coming in the next 25 years

What is the future of produce wholesalers? Survey says..

If only my business had...

Industry weighs in on changes to come in retailing

What’s the most important industry development?

Today’s blog post reflects industry responses to a tough question. The answers are by no means representative of the entire produce community, of course; only a few dozen people filled out the survey.

Still, let’s hear responses to this survey question:

Name one person who you believe has – in the past or the present – has had or will have an extraordinary and lasting impact on the fresh produce industry . . . and why.

From the anonymous industry responses:

Dick Spezzano for his work on implementing PLU standards within the industry;
Frieda Caplan. She proved women have a place and can make a difference in produce!;
Bruce Taylor - leading the convenience charge on fresh produce that helped to continue to push sales forward even as society sets aside less time to prepare meals;
Miles Reiter - Driscoll’s. Understands that flavor is the marketplace differentiation and has been the reason fresh berries have catapulted into the best selling produce item. Berries have driven the growth growth for the produce industry. As the only true brand in the produce industry, Driscoll’s gets the consumer;
Bill Montley, Rick Smith, Keith Horder;
I’m going to say Tom Mathison of Stemilt. He helped revolutionize the cherry industry, and has left a strong family legacy that continues to push the envelope. He was one of the first to truly recognize the importance of the cold chain with cherries and that formula is in place with numerous other produce items now;
I’m not being vain here but I hop it’s me. I love this business and the people in it and I hope to make it better for all. It has been my mission for the past 20 years and will continue until the day I die, maybe longer ;);
Jimmy Bassetti: His vision for better eating vegetables and passion to increase consumption;
John Shelford - In the Berry segment, he has brought integrity, innovation, and year round availability to a traditionally seasonal seasonal industry;
Sam Walton and Jim Sinegal of WalMart and Costco respectively, who increased sales of produce by developing new channels of distribution and made all their suppliers better;
Alan Siger. In 1995 he helped ensure the continuation and strengthening of PACA, which provides incredible protection for companies in the produce industry;
David Marguleas - he invented a whole new business, paying production royalties for proprietary items. Protecting the intellectual properties of branded fresh produce will stimulate product improvement and the ability of growers to be rewarded for inventing and patenting superior products;
Not possible to narrow it down to the one;
Roy Lundstrom (past) he was instrumental in the growing and increased importation of west Mexican veg;
Such a hard question to answer so I will give three; Retailer - Bruce Peterson, when he arrived at WalMart they had no produce program. The model he built with WalMart’s volume to go with it forced retailers to rethink how they compete. Some succumbed to the price image, while others created an identify to separate from price alone. The results we see today are directly related and continue to evolve. Supply Side / Grower Shipper - few people impress me, but David Jackson of Family Tree Farms is one man who made an incredible impression me. A seventh generation farmer...a man of faith and compassion and an insatiable desire to be the best. When the tree fruit deal in the SJV was teetering on disaster, he took an incredible gamble to “go big” in Mexico with blueberries over 10 years ago...today FTF blueberries are available coast to coast and globally. Supply Side / Grower Shipper - Jakov Dulcich, Pretty Lady Vineyards. I first met Nick Dulcich in the early 2000s when I was in desperate need of a revitalized table grape program for my stores. He told me in our first meeting, that if I bought grapes from him I would never want to buy grapes from another grower again. Bold words from someone who I just met and usually something that would turn me away...but something about his message stuck with me. So we embarked on a business relationship. I subsequently met Jakov within the first year I did business with the Dulcich’s. A man with broken English and a strong Croatian accent...but I didn’t need to understand Jakov to know his passion. Starting with 10 acres of land in the SJV in the 1960s on borrowed money he became a premier producer of table grapes. But more importantly he cared about his customers and those who worked for him. Jakov’s legacy will be one of hard work turning into success which alone didn’t define him. The table grape category is in a much better place because of Jakov Dulcich;
Whoever invented traceability, blockchain, everything is based on traceability, payments, bills, food safety, purchase orders, marketing data on consumers, etc...;
Dr. Bob Whitaker, as he is an innovative thinker, predictor and consolidator of ag business innovation and technology, helping the industry predict and respond to change;
I don’t know. We need more homegrown leaders that have come through the ranks and have the desire to take leadership;
Mike Aiton (Prime Time, recently retired).. Mike rose to retail prominence as a large chain director. First by his skill at handling people, second by recognizing and embracing new trends, allowing people to succeed with empowerment, and for his depth of produce knowledge;
Bruce Peterson;
Paul DiMare , a true visionary in growing tomatoes. Not only helping to finance ag. School research but implementing new techniques to plant, grow and harvest the crop. He has been a true advocate for the fresh produce industry;
Edward Sisler - discovery of 1-mcp to mitigate ripening effects of ethylene;
It would be those who are in product development bringing new items to market;
Tom Stenzel. Some of the work that United is doing to influence healthier choices in young children will have lasting and dramatic positive consequences for the entire industry.
There are too many to name!

TK: This is far from a complete list; I welcome follow-on comments to this post to honor others in the industry that come to mind when you read the question. I think, for example, of the many winners of The Packer’s Marketer of the Year/Person of the Year Awards over the past 30 years. Yes, there are too many leaders to name just one, but these answers from the industry compile a shortlist of respected - even revered - leaders who have made a difference.

How has technology transformed the produce industry?

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 06:19:40 GMT

Rise of Automation in Communication

Remember the days when cell phones weren’t “smart” and clouds were just something you watched for rain? Ah, technology has come a long way.

Prior to the 1980s, produce sales offices were a cacophony of voices, as a salesperson might have three or four handheld telephone receivers up to their ears taking orders. The fax machine was king in 1987, streamlining the fast-paced industry with orders being sent nearly instantly over phone lines.

Computers weren’t far behind. “We were one of the first produce companies to computerize and use fax machines,” says Gary Wishnatzki, president and owner of Wish Farms in Plant City, Fla. “I still remember a salesman of mine in 1983 or 1984 when we introduced computers for order taking and shipping who said ‘what do we need computers for?’”

Wherever you look, technology has advanced produce operations at lightning speed over the past 25 years. “Back when I first started, the temperature recorder [for a load] on a truck was a little machine that looked like a little radio; it had a roll of thermal paper,” says Jim Grabowski, marketing manager for Well-Pict Berries, who’s been in the strawberry industry for more than 30 years.

“You used to have to unroll a 10-foot roll [of paper] to get a temperature reading. Now we have GPS—it tells us exactly when and where a truck is at any time, and we can pull up temperatures at any moment.”

All the technological upgrades had one goal—faster ways to gather and distribute information. Today the popular term is simply “data,” which can be traditional numbers, words or paragraphs, visual images, or new-fangled modes like GIFs, emojis, and more. But the goal for automated systems remains the same—information, in whatever form—to drive business solutions.

The Move to Gather Data

The 1980s also brought universal product codes (UPCs) to supermarket shelves, but specific bulk produce stickers—Price Look-Up labels or PLUs—didn’t arrive until 1990. These tiny information-laden stickers continue to drive processes for fruit and vegetable operators in this generation. In fact, PMA reports that more than 1,450 fresh produce PLU codes exist today.

From a supply chain stance, this type of digital data has been critical in maintaining a safe food supply. The digital chain of information—now called blockchain—allows all parties involved to trace the history of any given box of fruit or tray of vegetables: when they were planted, who picked them (and what hour of what day), where they were packaged, when they were transported, when they were received, and even how they were used (retail vs. foodservice, for example).

Diving into Digital Methods

Digital cameras made their mark on fresh produce starting in the 2000s. “In the past, you would have to physically describe product damage or issues [over the phone],” Grabowski notes. “Now, if [a load] doesn’t meet standards, you can take a photo and have it a minute later.”

By 2000, wholesalers could shoot digital images of product from their spot on a terminal market and send them to potential customers for their approval, or showcase a new specialty item. At the grower level, inspectors in the field could snap a photo of potential pests or moisture damage and instantly transfer that information to a field manager, allowing for early treatment.

Videos became popular in the 2010s, revolutionizing the way the industry teaches others (think YouTube videos and Ted Talks) and how people promote products (including recipe prep and “how to” processing videos).

Today, phone calls, still photographs and high-quality videos are handled in one solitary device—the smartphone.

Delving into the Data

What to DO with all the data collected by fresh produce companies is the next challenge. Wish Farms, with its new automatic harvester for strawberries, notes that the machine takes more than 100 photos per plant during harvest. “We’ll have a catalog of more photos of strawberries than have ever been taken,” Wishnatzski says.

Luckily technology has also birthed “the cloud”—not the kind that releases precipitation, but a seemingly mystical off-site storage space for digital information. This virtual storehouse holds data including crop forecasts, warehouse inventory, manufacturing stats, transportation whereabouts, category management strategies, consumer buying trends and more, allowing fresh produce operators instant access to information from anywhere in the world.

Advancements in the Field

All the data out there has caused industry leaders to rethink their operations with an eye for making processes more efficient, effective and economical.

Wish Farms began working on an automatic harvester for strawberries in 2013 along with Harvest CROO Robotics.

“Back in late 2000s-2010s we were seeing major issues with availability of labor,” Wishnatzski says. “It became clear to me then that it was not going to improve.”
Typically, human harvesters will go through a strawberry field about 40 times within the six-month harvest period.

The machine, called Harvest CROO—Computerized Robotic Optimized Obtainer—has gone through several iterations and the company is closing in on a commercial machine that should be in the fields for strawberry harvest this fall, Wishnatzski says.

Prior to planting, plastic-lined strawberry fields use GPS to determine where each strawberry plant will go. That data is mapped and stored in the cloud for the machine to reference later.

“Plants have to be precisely spaced and GPS set up for it to work,” he says.

Using data gathered from previous technology, the new machine features a picking wheel with a series of claws and the ability to twist and move like a human wrist, allowing the harvester to select only ripe berries during each pass of a row. The company also worked hard to develop a vision system (via digital camera images) with “stereo vision,” which allows the harvester to “see” several angles of a plant and record digital images of each developing berry. That data is recorded so that the harvester knows when each individual berry on each individual plant is ripe and ready to pick.

A few growers are experimenting with drones—that’s right, unmanned flying computers—to monitor crop conditions for pests and diseases. New Jersey tomato grower Growtopia/Sorbello Farms has experimented with the technology in an effort to pinpoint pesticide usage. If a problem is discovered, drones can be programmed with a particular field location via GPS and sent out for a precision application.

There’s the potential to do similar field scouting of strawberries embedded into the technology of the CROO harvester, Wishnatzki says. Cameras on the harvester sit below the canopy of the strawberry plants, giving growers the ability to note disease or pest pressure at the ground level instead of from the air (as is the case with drones) and be able to make a precision application of chemicals as exacting as a row or even a particular plant.

Focus on the Future

“Mechanical harvesting platforms are today where cell phones were in the early 1980s to make a phone call,” Wishnatzski says. Growers right now are thinking about how to use automation to pick berries, he says, “but there are so many more things that it will be capable of doing once we have these platforms going in the fields.” Instead of using humans to count strawberry blooms and forecast crops, the platform will be able to do it more accurately.

“There are a ton of other possibilities,” Wishnatzki says, which might include using UV light to kill mildew and using fungicides in conjunction with machines running at night, maximizing efficiency. “We’re also looking at hydrocooling berries in the field on that same platform/machine,” he says.

While the industry may not know what new innovation is next around the corner, it can be sure that technology will drive the change.

Chemicals force industry change

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 06:23:13 GMT

Large farms grew even larger during the mid-20th century. Advances in planting technology boosted yields thanks to chemical treatments—something scientists and researchers saw as a way to benefit production while increasing shelf life in fruits and vegetables.

However, the New Yorker magazine’s three-part series “The Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson in 1962 opened a proverbial can of worms, bringing to light farmers’ reliance on synthetic pesticides and insecticides, and exposing the threat that these chemicals could be found affecting all levels of the food chain.

Combating Chemicals

Carson pushed for a stop to aerial spraying of DDT, the “wonder” chemical used to kill lice on soldiers during World War II and used to treat pests on food crops.

Stories about chemicals infiltrated the news, making consumers much more aware of growing practices than they had been previously. The produce industry faced calls to rescind Alar (used primarily on apples), ethylene dibromide and methyl bromide, among others.

National events made consumers hyper-aware of toxins, like the Three Mile Island nuclear radiation leak in Pennsylvania in 1979, and numerous reports of dangerous hazardous waste dump sites, like the Love Canal in New York in the 1980s. Toxins were top of mind for consumers during this era, so any news about chemicals that were cause for concern brought quick reaction.

In 1981, a Medfly infestation panicked growers, threatening as many as 200 varieties of fresh fruits and vegetables in California. Aerial spraying of the pesticide malathion above 40 square miles of suburban San Francisco had consumers concerned.

Three years later, the EPA suspended the use of ethylene dibromide (EDB) as a soil fumigant for items like citrus, pineapple, mangoes and papayas because of its carcinogenic properties and the fact that the chemical was showing up in groundwater contamination.

In the late 1980s, consumers faced the “Alar scare”—alarm over a chemical used to keep apples on the tree longer to boost shelf life. High-profile media exposure in 1989—including an infamous CBS “60 Minutes” interview and public messages by popular actress Meryl Streep—spread misinformation on a grand scale.

The message that consumers heard was that growers sprayed Alar on apples with the sole purpose of making them more cosmetically perfect—bigger and darker red, says John Rice, who was chairman of the board for the International Apple Institute (now the U.S. Apple Association) during that time and is now a retired Pennsylvania apple grower. In reality, Alar helped keep fruit on the tree longer, producing a firmer, sweeter apple with longer shelf life. (And, as a result, making them larger and redder).

“In the span of about a week, apples sales went down something like 45%,” Rice says. “Apples in many places were just sitting on counters with no one buying them, also applesauce and juices. Everyone at that point was losing money on everything they sold.”

The apple industry, and the fresh produce industry by default, learned some valuable lessons from the Alar scare during this time period, Rice says. “People were convinced by the media that kids were dying all across the county because of [Alar], and there was never anyone brought forward who was harmed by Alar. The Alar scare was created by the media.”

He notes, however, that the media still has that unprecedented sway.

Consumers Take Control

As is the case today, public opinion during these few decades forced action. Public outcry compelled the fresh produce industry to look for ways to use fewer chemicals while still ensuring strong production. Carson outlined a solution using “biological controls” for managing farm operations, which opened the door to the idea of organic growing practices on a large scale—an idea that is now big business in the fresh produce industry.

This entire period in history changed consumers’ focus on produce. Shoppers began to pay attention to how fresh produce was grown, and while initially this seemed like a negative thing, media attention spurred consumer interest in a variety of commodities.

During this generation, consumption of fruits and vegetables grew exponentially. The Packer noted that U.S. consumption of fresh produce jumped 23% from 1978 to 1989, and typical retail produce department offerings more than tripled from 1975 to 1988. By the late 1980s, stores were carrying more than 200 fresh produce items.

The far-reaching effects of Carson’s warnings about agriculture’s chemical applications essentially started the modern environmental movement in America, driving an interest in organics, food safety, integrated pest management and other topics that remain headliners today.

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