Eastern Produce Council celebrates 50 years with South Carolina
The Eastern Produce Council and South Carolina celebrated their 50th anniversary together at TopGolf in Edison, NJ, on Tuesday, April 26. This meeting marked the 50th consecutive year SCDA came up to New Jersey to sponsor a meeting for the council. Marianne Santo, EPC president and category manager of Wakefern Food Corp., welcomed the group and thanked the department for its decades of support.
Katie Pfeiffer, market development coordinator for the South Carolina Department of Agriculture, was joined by representatives of the South Carolina Peach, Watermelon, and Specialty Crop councils. Pfeiffer shared a video from Hugh Weathers, South Carolina’s commissioner of agriculture. Weathers gave an update about the South Carolina crops and he also thanked the EPC for the 50-year relationship and stressed the importance of the metro New York marketplace for their business.
John Keown, President of the South Carolina Governor’s School for Agriculture, also spoke on the video with regard to the Martin Eubanks Farm. This on-campus commercial fruit and vegetable operation will provide a hands-on horticulture experience for students and prepare them for a future career in the produce industry. To support this effort the EPC will make another $5,000 donation in Eubanks’ memory. Eubanks, a fixture at EPC/SCDA events for decades, spent 33 years with the SCDA and died in January of 2020.
Prior to the SCDA-sponsored meeting, EPC’s 2022 Leadership Class attended an informational and interactive seminar at TopGolf on food safety led by Wes Kline and Meredith Melendez from Rutgers University's Cooperative Extension.
Up next on the EPC’s calendar is the annual BBQ sponsored by the New Jersey Department of Agriculture on Tuesday, May 24 at Demarest Farm in Hillsdale, NJ, and their annual Golf Outing at Fox Hollow Golf Club in Branchburg, NJ. For further information, you can visit their website.
Photo: Celebrating their 50th anniversary together are members of the EPC board, the South Carolina Department of Agriculture and South Carolina Specialty Crop Growers.
