Though Peru’s initial projection of avocado shipments to the U.S. market for 2023 were similar to the 2022 volume of about 270 million pounds, early shipments are running well behind last year, with Peru’s volume expecting to come much later in the summer.

Cambridge Farms, which is headquartered in South Easton, MA, but has potato deals throughout the East Coast, is looking forward to an excellent Eastern Shore potato harvest when digging begins in mid-June.

“We are excited about the Eastern Shore deal. Our tests show that we are going to have excellent quality and good volume,” said Ken Gad, president of the company. “We expect to get going roughly around June 12 with a great crop and an orderly marketing situation.”

It was a blow to Dover, DE-based Papen Farms when Richard Papen suddenly died in the spring of 2022, but the family-run company has continued to move forward, and is expecting an excellent 2023 vegetable season to start by mid-June.

In late May, Parker Farms was putting the finishing touches on a new packaging facility that will allow it to offer its retail customers an overwrap, value-added option on sweet corn and its other vegetables.

The Eastern Shore is loosely defined as the Delmarva Peninsula encompassing a handful of counties in Delaware, Maryland and Virginia, separated from the mainland to the west by the Chesapeake Bay, and washed by the Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean on the east.

Oscar Guzman, director of marketing and sales at Progressive Produce in Los Angeles, has long been on an educational mission. Now that he has achieved his doctorate, his new goal is to provide others in the produce industry access to the implicit knowledge embedded in the industry — knowledge gained through experiences and on-the-job learning that goes beyond what can be found in textbooks.