Tom Wright, manager of Laurel Farmers Auction Inc. in Laurel, DE, told The Produce News that the cooperative has had over 2,000 stockholders in its 71-year career.

“Despite the bad weather affecting many Midwest and Eastern states this year, we are having a normal season,” said Richard Papen, sales manager and member of the family owning Papen Farms Inc. in Dover, DE. “We’ve been spared those terrible tornados that have affected so many people. Our hearts go out to them. Other than it being a little dry, it’s a normal growing season for us.”

Dublin Farms Inc. in Horntown, VA, is a grower, shipper and packer of potatoes for the fresh market. The company also grows snap beans for processing and grain crops like corn, soybeans and wheat for the poultry industry.

David Hickman, vice president of the company, said that the firm sells directly to retailers, including chainstores, and to wholesalers, repackers and brokers at terminal markets.

Planted acreage is not the only factor that determines how many boxes of melons a grower may produce over the course of a season. Weather is also a significant factor. And at Westside Produce, a grower, packer and shipper of cantaloupes and honeydews, based in Firebaugh, CA, on the San Joaquin Valley’s famed West Side, that possibility may very well be demonstrated this year.

With the fourth generation now in the business, Turlock Fruit Co. Inc., headquartered in Turlock, CA, has been shipping melons from California’s San Joaquin Valley since 1918. The company grows, packs and ships cantaloupe, honeydew melons and an assortment of mixed specialty melons.

Cool spring weather in Central California has delayed the start of the West Side melon season, but it is not expected to adversely affect total production, which, for Pappas & Co. in Mendota, CA, is projected to be similar to last year.

But Rodney Van Bebber, sales manager at Pappas, is hoping that the weather conditions that have been experienced by melon growers in other parts of the country may mean opportunities on the East Coast this year for West Side growers, in spite of high transportation costs due to the high cost of fuel.