United Natural Foods Inc. is taking actions to advance the company’s multi-year strategy focused on creating more customized value for its customers and suppliers and driving profitable growth.

In support of its strategy, the company will realign its commercial wholesale organization into two product-centered divisions, conventional grocery products and natural, organic, specialty and fresh products, while continuing to enhance its enterprise-wide commercial and supply chain capabilities.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s updates to the Marketing Assistance for Specialty Crops initiative include an additional $650 million investment.

“Specialty crop growers across the U.S. are facing severe and unique challenges. As we wrote in December, the USDA’s MASC program is an important step in helping growers recover from this economic battering, and with today’s announcement, we are grateful to the USDA for recognizing that even more was needed," the Specialty Crop Farm Bill Alliance said in a statement.

Tropical fruit grower and importer Tierra Suelta is seeing strong volumes of high-quality, Florida-grown star fruit.

The highly anticipated Organic Produce Summit has officially opened registration for qualified retailers. The leading organic and fresh produce event provides the freshest insights on organic produce and will take place July 9-10 in Monterey, CA.

Qualified retailers will receive complimentary registration and hotel stay, as well as the opportunity to join one of the many field tours showcasing North America’s most innovative and progressive organic producers.

A happy shopper is a returning shopper. So, how do grocery retailers keep their customers happy? Well, according to the eighth annual dunnhumby Retailer Preference Index in these tough times it is no surprise that saving customers money — through price, promotions and rewards — is the most important predictor for retailers to have stronger, long-term market success in the United States.