Hot off the heels of United Fresh’s BrandStorm, there’s a renewed buzz around sustainability. For the produce industry, this isn’t a new topic. We’ve been pounding the pavement and leading the charge on everything from drip irrigation to more eco-friendly packaging.

The idea of helping fight food insecurity has been instilled in Leslie Gordon since she was a child.

“I was meant to be in food-banking,” she said. “My grandfather’s name was Norman Goldberg, and he used to tell us stories that sometimes when he was younger, the only thing he would have to eat in a day was an apple that he would pick from a neighboring farmer’s tree. So, he knew what it was to be hungry.”

Spring has sprung and with it has arrived a diverse set of apples and pears to transition the domestic to the imported crop. Rolling in with some of the best quality to date, Oppy looks to delight retailers and consumers with a freshly harvested mix from the Southern Hemisphere available coast to coast.

BJ’s Wholesale Club announced that Lee Delaney, the company’s president and CEO, died unexpectedly on April 8 due to presumed natural causes. He was 49.

Mr. Delaney had been CEO since February 2020 and president since September 2019. Prior to that he was BJ's chief commercial officer for three years. Earlier in his career he spent 20 years with Bain & Co.

“I’m very glad about the coming season,” Carlos Bon Jr., vice president of sales for Divine Flavor, said of the Mexican grape deal. “We’ll have great quality and great-flavored grapes.”

Sonoran production is expected to run late this year, but Bon said his firm won’t ship before the time is right. “We’re not named ‘Divine Early’.  We are ‘Divine Flavor,’ and we are very excited about our strong investment in new varieties.”

Best known for potatoes, onions and sweet potatoes, Wada Farms Marketing Group LLC is becoming increasingly recognized for watermelons, and has recently announced a major expansion in its watermelon program, with year-round supplies coming from numerous production areas.