SALINAS, CA – D’Arrigo Brothers Co. of California is growing its sales team with the addition of three new team members. Marcus Adame, Michelle Georgalos and Charlie Domalaog have all been hired as Sales Assistants.
Marcus is a graduate from Westmont College where he majored in biology with a minor in chemistry. In college, he played baseball and worked as a medical assistant as well as interning in the crisis unit at Natividad Hospital.
Prior to this new position, Michelle held positions in Safeway’s produce department, at Salinas Union High School District where she worked with at-risk-youth and at Pro*Act as an account manager.
Charlie spent 18 years at Grainger Industrial Supply before joining D’Arrigo Brothers. He also spent 9 years with Chieftain Harvesting.
D’Arrigo is dedicated to growing its business while focusing on its employees. The company’s website quotes John D’Arrigo, President, as saying, “We pride ourselves on building life-long relationships with our employees, some of which have been with the company for decades.”
Congratulations on these new positions Marcus, Michelle and Charlie!
MEXICO – Mexico’s National Association of Supermarkets and Department Stores (ANTAD), which represents 35,000 stores in that country, announced that the fruits and vegetables sold in Mexico’s supermarkets will now feature a four-digit PLU code.
The PLU has been used globally since 1998 and allows shops, suppliers and consumers to identify the type, size and variety of each product as well as if it comes from organic or conventional crops.
ANTAD does note, however, that 13 types of products will be excluded from this system: corn, beans, potatoes, peas, artichokes, endive, cabbage, garlic, chestnuts, lychees, mushrooms, radicchio and rhubarb.
La Jornada reports that Mexico’s implementation of the PLU is planned for three stages. The first began in September, but only applied to 26 products: apples, pears, papaya, beets, cilantro, parsley, grapefruit, nectarines, grapes, plums, peaches, apricots, mangoes, melons, asparagus, arugula, avocado, Swiss chard, kale, tomatoes, spinach, lettuce, leeks, kohlrabi, bunches of edible plants (greens) and fruit (berries including blackberry and raspberry).
ANTAD says that the code is currently operating in some stores with others in the process of completing the first stage.
The second stage is scheduled to add 125 different products by March 2015. According to La Jornada, these new products will include oranges, lemons, nuts, seeds and even plants like mint leaves and ferns. The third stage will include labeling to “an optional product group,” according to ANTAD.
To help implement this new code, ANTAD signed an agreement with the Mexican representative of GSI, a regulatory agency for business standards that has 2 million associates in 150 countries, as well as the Produce Marketing Association (PMA).
All three organizations have listings of worldwide products that are labeled with PLU that are divided by scientific name, variety, product name and size of the crop. It can be viewed on their websites: www.pma.com, www.antad.net and www.gs1mexico.org.
This code should directly benefit trade by ensuring selling price per product and quick identification for inventory management.
DUNDEE, SCOTLAND - Thanks to Grewar Farm Vending, Scotland is the latest home to the veggie vending format which has been raising eyebrows in produce circles. Given the success Farmer's Fridge has enjoyed with this format in Los Angeles and Chicago, it is worth wondering if this could be the beginnings of the next big trend in produce.
The new vending machine lets customers purchase bags of potatoes or trays of fresh vegetables the same way one might buy a Snickers bar or a bag of chips.
“It is a new venture but an exciting one,” shared Grewar's Pete Grewar in the Courier. “We’ve had a vending machine out at the bottom of the farm road for two months and it has been very popular but it is a quiet road so we thought we would try it somewhere with a bit more footfall and the Overgate were very keen.”
In addition to the Dundee operation, Grewar also operates vending machines in:
- East Ardler Farm, Scotland
- Dronley Farm, Scotland
- Lamb & Gardiner, Scotland
As the Courier notes, all produce stocked in the Grewar Vending Machine is locally sourced or grown on the company's own farming operations.
“We grow all the potatoes ourselves and if we don’t grow the other vegetables they will be sourced from Tayside or north east Fife,” Pete explained. “It’s great quality and has to be in season.”
Reaction from local residents has already been strong. For example, Dundee community member Jill Darling remarked, “I think it might work out very well because there is nothing else nearby where people can buy vegetables other than Lidl. It’s a definite start and you know you are getting good products.”
In addition to convenience, part of the appeal of this format is its competitive pricing. £5 (roughly $7.81) will purchase a full tray of vegetables and eggs, complete with six free-range eggs, six baking potatoes, a swede, 1.25kg of onions and 1.25kg of carrots.
There are even plans to expand the format into two additional towns if it performs well.
With companies on both sides of the Atlantic working to expand this intriguing produce format, I know this is one trend I'll be keeping my eye on closely.
SUMMERVILLE, SC – Katie Stagliano, the 16-year-old Founder and Director of Katie’s Krops, has a new accomplishment to add to her growing resume: published author. Katie's Cabbage is a new children's book dedicated to the story of a little cabbage seedling exploring the ideas of generosity and service that originally motivated Katie to found Katie's Krops.
"This book has been a dream of mine for years,” she shared. “I hope my story will inspire other children to follow their dreams."
"I want to thank my family, Fruits Fruits Marketing and Bonnie Plants,” Katie continued. “Their generous support made this book possible."
The book is currently available on Amazon and is being prepared for a nationwide launch in bookstores. Katie's partners in this effort, the University of South Carolina and Young Palmetto Books, were instrumental in getting to this point.
“It was a pleasure to work with Katie and her family on this project,” said Kim Shealy Jeffcoat, Senior Editor of Young Palmetto Books. “The story of Katie and her cabbage is a wonderful addition to the series and will be enjoyed by children of all ages.”
According to a press release, Katie's Krops is sponsored by:
- Bi-Lo
- LoBue Citrus
- FirstFruits’ Opal Apple®
- RPE’s line of Tasteful Selections™ potatoes
- WP Rawl
The 2015 Katie’s Krops grant is open through December 31st so readers ages 9-16 inspired by Katie’s Cabbage have the chance to start their own gardens and join the Katie’s Krops family.
Congratulations on this impressive accomplishment, Katie!
LA CAÑADA FLINTRIDGE, CA – On December 13th of this year, the Allen Lund Company participated in two holiday charity events: Navidad en el Barrio and Wreaths Across America.
This is the 9th consecutive year that the Allen Lund Company participated in Navidad en el Barrio.
According to a press release, more than 50,000 people are served each year from the efforts of Navidad, which accepts and utilizes donations to assemble food baskets containing chicken, cheese and produce items for a healthy holiday meal.
To help this year, the Allen Lund Company provided logistics support along with produce donated by its customers like Dayka and Hackett.
Also on December 13th, the Allen Lund Company participated in Wreaths Across America, marking its 7th consecutive year helping to deliver thousands of Christmas wreaths.
“This year the company, along with thousands of volunteers, celebrated Arlington’s 150th anniversary by placing wreaths over 230,000 graves to honor the sacrifice of our veterans,” said Bill Bess, Director of Carrier Development for the Allen Lund Company.
In addition to Arlington, the Allen Lund Company provided transportation to the Sarasota National Cemetery where 3,500 wreaths were placed.
It is always great to see members of the industry giving back for good causes. Great job, Allen Lund Company!
SEATTLE, WA - Amazon has unveiled Prime Now, a new service that aims to deliver goods in as little as one hour. Could AmazonFresh be the next to offer one-hour delivery for produce?
Over the course of the year, AmazonFresh has expanded to a number of major urban areas including San Diego, New York City, and most recently, Philadelphia. In that time, Amazon has been experimenting with same-day grocery delivery, having expanded its partnership with USPS. Other businesses, such as Google Express, Instacart, Peapod, and even Uber, are all fighting to gain traction in an increasingly competitive grocery delivery market. Amazon’s Prime Now is taking the competition a step further with one-hour delivery.
Last October, I wondered if Amazon’s first-ever brick-and-mortar store would serve as a fresh produce hub for AmazonFresh in New York. The revelation of Prime Now seems to shed some light on the matter. According to the Washington Post, Amazon says that a portion of that building will be used as a delivery hub for Prime Now orders. Amazon has so far declined to disclose inventory specifics at the building, leaving the place of produce in Prime Now ambiguous. Still, it’s not entirely out of the question just yet.
Amazon says Prime Now currently offers more than 25,000 items for delivery, and it’s taking requests for items that it does not yet carry. Eligible products include various grocery items such as cereals, canned goods, and juices, as well as “everyday essentials” like batteries or paper towels.
Prime Now is exclusive for Amazon Prime members and is only available for customers in Manhattan, though Amazon promises to expand the service to other cities next year, according to Wall Street Journal.
The one thing that remains clear is that grocery delivery is becoming an increasingly fierce market. With the popularity and expansion that AmazonFresh has seen so far, it may just be produce that will keep the company ahead of its competitors. Given the infrastructure, I still wonder if AmazonFresh would adopt a similar one-hour delivery service.
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
For more on Amazon and AmazonFresh, keep it here on AndNowUKnow.
Pete Overgaag, the President of Hollandia Produce, L.P., has been featured in the latest edition of AndNowUKnow’s print publication, The Snack Magazine. Pete discussed how his family’s ‘leave no stone unturned’ mentality has shaped the company into a produce powerhouse.
Check out The Snack article by clicking here, or read the full article below:
Never Leave A Stone Unturned
Pete Overgaag slips on a coat and pulls himself into the driver’s seat of a loaded truck. It’s just after midnight, and he hasn’t had much sleep. With a smile, he turns the key in the ignition and remembers the call he received moments ago: “Sorry for the late notice; I was supposed to leave an hour ago, but I’m too sick and can’t drive,” said the caller. At the sound of the engine roar, Pete steps on the accelerator and drives off with a truck full of produce, determined he can still deliver it on time. Dedicated, yet soft-spoken, this is the President behind Hollandia Produce, L.P.
“There’s always room for improvement. No matter what area, personally or professionally, you can always do better. That’s why we’re always checking to see what else we can do.”
“I grew up in this company, and I know all the aspects behind its processes – from the dirt to the truck,” Pete tells me. From that one statement, I already know that I’m speaking with someone who has proven time after time his devotion to the industry, and his passion to seek new ways to enhance his brand.
Pete was destined to be a greenhouse vegetable grower. It’s been a long-standing tradition in his family going back to its roots in Holland starting with both of his grandfathers. Coming from a long line of greenhouse growers, he’s quick to say that his family, especially his parents, is one of his biggest influences on his life.
“Growing plants is what I’ve done all my life. It’s completely in my blood,” he says. “I’m proud to be able to keep our family farming tradition going here in California.”
In 1968, his parents and three siblings, Ellen, Karin, and Leo, packed their bags and emigrated to America from Holland, all the while knowing very little English at the time. Upon arrival in California’s Santa Barbara County, Pete’s father started working as an estate groundskeeper for a couple of years before deciding to buy an existing cut flower nursery in Carpinteria in 1970. This facility would later come to be known as Hollandia Produce.
Though the facility was already growing cut flowers, Pete’s father started experimenting with greenhouse vegetables such as hothouse cucumbers and tomatoes throughout the 1980s. About a decade later, operations expanded to include lettuce, and eventually cress by 2000. Flowers, cucumbers, and tomatoes were phased out of production shortly afterward so the company could sharpen its focus on growing multiple varieties of lettuce and cress. Even through all those 44 years of hard work, many of the people who made Hollandia what it is today are still working to continually improve the brand.
“My sisters Ellen and Karin still work for Hollandia, but my brother Leo and his wife Suzette own North Shore Greenhouses. We all work closely together despite being separate companies,” he says. That bond carries over to company employees as well, including some who have been working and are still working for the company ever since it was first established.
“I couldn’t be more proud of the example my parents set. I’m always so inspired by them and our team. We have a family atmosphere here, and everyone is dedicated to moving things forward,” he tells me. “To me, that’s very motivating. We move together as a single unit.”
A common understanding of the company’s core values is what keeps everyone together. These values serve as a daily reminder to keep moving toward a unified goal, especially towards food and employee safety. Hollandia even scored a 100% on its last food safety audit by Primus Labs. “We took a survey amongst ourselves and really defined our values; namely, a positive work environment and food and employee safety,” Pete tells me. “We’re committed to making sure everything is as safe as possible.”
Today, Hollandia offers Living Butter Lettuce, Living 3-in-1 Lettuce, Living Red Butter Lettuce, and Living Upland Cress under its Live Gourmet brand, along with its certified organic Grower Pete’s living butter lettuce and watercress. All lettuce products are packaged in the company’s protective “Squircle” clamshell, and all are sold with their roots still attached, to keep the products as fresh as possible when they arrive in store.
“Our ‘Squircle’ clamshell was immediately a big hit and helped give us a unique look for our brand. We realized we could fit about 20% more products on the pallet just by changing the shape to our current design,” Pete tells me. “The benefit for our retailers and the end user is that we’re able to lift the plants out of the growing channel and package them whole with the roots intact. The consumer receives a fresher plant with extended shelf life because it’s still living.”
The innovations didn’t stop there. Even in the midst of California’s severe statewide drought, Hollandia employs a continuous-flow-hydroponic system, known as nutrient film technique (NFT), to recycle water while also limiting water loss due to evaporation and preventing soil erosion. Depending on the region, soil structure, time of year, and irrigation method used, this hydroponic system conserves 66-84% of the water that would be used if the lettuce were to be grown in the field.
“Our systems naturally save water,” he explains. “All of the roots of the plants are in the enclosed growing channels, and the water they’re given in those channels is re-circulated, re-filtered, and re-sterilized.”
“Leave no stone unturned,” he reminds me.
Having a hydroponic system not only produces generally 3.55 times more lettuce per acre than conventional field growing methods, but it also allows the company to precisely control and fine-tune all of the living conditions for the plants, including nutrients and climate. Each of the company’s 25 acres worth of greenhouses are computer-controlled and include sensors that tell growers if it’s too cold or too warm. By using energy-saving thermal curtains, efficient heating systems, and by maximizing the solar efficiencies of the greenhouses, Hollandia has also successfully cut energy consumption by 60% over the last ten years.
“We really baby the plants,” Pete laughs. There’s still a lot left in store for this family-operated produce company. For the past two years, Hollandia has been hydroponically producing organic butter lettuce and watercress, and Pete indicates that the company will continue to expand on that program.
“We see the butter lettuce market as a good opportunity to grow because it’s such a small percentage of the total lettuce category,” he says. “We’re working to expand on organic hydroponics and hopefully convert more consumers to butter lettuce.”
For a company steeped in more than 40 years of family heritage, there’s no doubt in my mind that Hollandia Produce will continue to strive toward better products, food safety, and efficiency. Just ask Pete Overgaag.
“Leave no stone unturned,” he reminds me.
For someone who is willing to take command and help a trucker in need even in the dead of night, I can believe Pete Overgaag is always ready to go the extra mile for his family business.
MCLEAN, VA – Gladstone Land Corporation has announced that it won, through public auction, the right to acquire a 331-acre strawberry farm in Salinas, California for approximately $17.0 million. This works out to approximately $51,359 per acre.
The property is located in a premier agricultural region in Monterey County, has four wells on site with ample water and excellent soil. According to a press release, the current tenant on the farm is one of the nation’s largest shippers of fresh strawberries.
“We are very pleased to win the auction to buy this farm,” said David Gladstone, Chairman of the Company. “With the continued growth of our portfolio and increase in borrowing facilities, we are able to take on larger transactions, as evidenced by this acquisition potentially marking the third farm purchase greater then $13 million that we will have closed in the past four months.”
As we previously reported, the Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corporation (“Farmer Mac”) recently extended Gladstone a line of credit valued at a long-term total of $75 million, which the company plans to use to finance this acquisition as well as to acquire more farmland. This acquisition is expected to close in early January 2015.
On that point, Gladstone added, “We continue to see a number of excellent opportunities on the near-term horizon that we hope to be able to take advantage of.”
Currently the company owns 32 farms, comprised of 8,039 acres in 5 different states across the U.S., valued at approximately $191 million.
WASHINGTON D.C. - The USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) is making $3 million in grants available to advance the use of robotic technology in American agriculture. The four grants are part of the National Robotics Initiative (NRI), a federal research partnership that includes the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Department of Defense.
“We are on the cusp of seeing incredible advancement in the use of robotics and sensors supporting agriculture in this country,” said Sonny Ramaswamy, NIFA Director. “These technologies, which are components of the ‘internet of agricultural things,’ have the ability to make agriculture production more efficient, saving time and money – benefits that can be passed from producers to consumers.”
Some of NIFA's FY 2014 awards went to:
- Georgia Tech: $900,498
- University of Illinois: $532,607
- Carnegie Mellon University: $556,726
- Washington State University: $1,010,169
The National Robotics Initiative is geared towards creating the next generation of robots sophisticated enough to work alongside or in conjunction with human workers. The National Institutes of Food and Agriculture's role in this mission is creating new technologies which enhance food production, processing, and distribution that benefit consumers and rural communities. According to a press release, examples of these technologies include:
- Automated systems for inspection, sorting, processing, or handling products in post-harvest, processing or product distribution settings.
- Improved robotics for inspection, sorting, and handling of plants and flowers in greenhouses and nurseries.
- Multi-modal and rapid sensing systems for detecting microbial contamination, defects, ripeness, physical damage, size, shape, and other quality attributes or for monitoring air or water quality.
Personally, I am excited to see what this next generation of robotics could have in store and how this technology could impact the the produce industry moving into the future. Be sure to stay tuned for more updates on the industry's latest tech innovations.
LIMA, PERU – In the period from January to November of 2014, Peruvian exports of blueberries totaled 2,080,782 kilos (approximately 4,587,339 lbs).
AgrodataPerú reports that this total represents an 84% increase over the same period last year, which totaled 1,129,765 kilos. In terms of value, these exports totaled to $22,173,985, which is a 68% increase over the same period in 2013.
According to the specialized portal, the United States was the top importer of Peruvian blueberries with a value of $10.2 million, which is 46% of the total. Other importers include:
- Hong Kong, $5 million (23%)
- Netherlands, $4.9 million (22%)
- U.K. (6%)
- Spain (1%)
- Coasta Rica (1%)
In terms of exporters, TalSA led with $12,115,000 (55% of the total) followed by Camposol with $8,014,000, Hortifrut with $527,000, Intipa Foods with $455,000 and Exportadora Frutícola del Sur with $301,000, according to Agraria.pe.
With these increases in the Peruvian export market, it will certainly be interesting to see if this trend continues through 2015.