Val Verde Vegetable Co. Inc., a McAllen, TX-based grower-shipper operation founded more than 25 years ago on land farmed by the Schuster family for 80 years, has returned to an all-Schuster management team.

Frank Schuster Sr. came to the Rio Grande Valley from his native Austria in 1935 and quickly developed a prosperous farming and ranching operation as well as becoming a leader in the Texas produce industry. His son, Frank Schuster Jr., took over the company at the time of his father’s death in 1977 and formed Val Verde Vegetable Co. in 1987.

Last year, the company flirted with leadership outside the family ties for a short time, but today the management team is once again comprised of three members of the Schuster family. Frank Schuster serves as president and chief executive officer and is in charge of the sales team. Son Kurt is chief financial officer and son Max takes care of the production end of the business.

“Everything is going very well,” said Kurt Schuster in mid-August. “We had a very, very good year, which has allowed us to take care of some projects we were contemplating.”

In this past year, the company has upgraded its cold storage facility, added new computer technology, began a greenhouse project in Mexico and invested in state-of-the-art irrigation technology on its ranches. Schuster said it was a good year for many of the company’s crops, but was quick to credit the unprecedented sky-high lime market early this year for making a good year a much better one financially. “Yes the lime market definitely helped us out,” he said. “We had a lot of projects that we were eyeballing that we were able to get done.”

Some weather situations in Mexico last winter lead to a shortage situation in the year-round Mexican lime deal from the beginning of the year through spring. The lime market was well over $100 a carton for weeks on end. “It was a perfect storm,” he said, admitting that it was probably a once-in-a-lifetime event.

Val Verde Vegetables has had a lime deal for many years and this year it was able to reap the benefits. But Schuster said it didn’t come without apprehension and worry. Essentially servings as the middleman, he said each load required an eye-popping upfront investment sent to Mexico to get the product shipped to the United States.

But the good year wasn’t exclusive to limes. Schuster said the continual construction of Mexican Federal Highway 40, a super highway that will eventually connect the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico in Brownsville, TX, has already significantly cut the travel time from Sinaloa to South Texas. For decades, the vast majority of the vegetable production from the Culiacan district has entered the United States through Nogales, AZ. Schuster said now it makes sense to use South Texas as well. This has meant more winter vegetable volume into Mexico and is the main reason that Val Verde has increased its investments in that Mexican growing district. “We are expanding our product base,” he said. “We have a much bigger tomato program as well as cucumbers, celery, Bell peppers and even hot peppers.”

The highway starts at Mazatlán on the Pacific Ocean and cuts through the mountains in central and northern Mexico. A truck taking the entire trip from ocean to ocean can do it in about half the time. And from Sinaloa to South Texas is a pretty easy drive now.

Val Verde also continues to grow and ship vegetable crops in South Texas. Schuster said much of the Texas acreage is devoted to leafy greens, though they also have other vegetables including turnips, broccoli and a new colored cauliflower program.

As far as the leafy greens are concerned, Schuster said food-safety issues make it a great fit for its Texas land where it has a greater control over the production and harvesting operations. The many items that fall under the leafy greens umbrella have very tight standards and the company feels more secure growing those items under its watchful eye.

This year, Val Verde has adopted GTIN numbers for all of its produce items to comply with the Produce Traceability Initiative. Schuster said only a handful of its customers are asking for compliance at this point but the company has done what it needs to do from a supplier standpoint.