Veteran California vegetable salesman Mark McBride is pretty blunt about what he has witnessed over the last several weeks with the leafy green market. “If anybody tells you they’ve seen this before, they are lying,” said the Coastline Family Farms sales executive with close to five decades of experience. “I’ve never seen anything like this before — not even close.”

The North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect in 1994 and soon thereafter Phillip Garcia opened his customs house brokerage business.

“The first year, I crossed about 80 trucks,” he said speaking of the business he cleared from Mexico into the United States over the Pharr Bridge in South Texas. “The second year I did 500 trucks and we’ve been growing ever since. Now we clear about 9,000 to 10,000 trucks annually.”

The eighth annual Kayla Bernardi Bee Positive 5K Fun Run/Walk will be held Jan. 28, 2023 in Turlock, CA, to honor the late daughter of Joe Bernardi, president and CEO of Bernardi & Associations. Registration is now open at beepositivefoundation.org.

A warm, dry summer with limited rain reduced acreage for some of the typical Rio Grande Valley winter crops, but the growing weather has been excellent for creating top quality production.

At least that was the report from Dante Galeazzi, president and CEO of the Texas International Produce Association. “We’ve seen a decrease in acreage in some of our plantings, including onions, cabbage and greens,” he said. “But those same conditions that reduced acreage are great growing conditions. Because of that, quality should be excellent.”

Some food products are surviving the challenges caused by inflationary pressure relatively unscathed while others are feeling the bite of higher prices, according to Matthew Barry, insights manager with Euromonitor International Ltd., a worldwide market research company headquartered in London.

By his own admission, Michael Madden of Macadu Fresh didn’t have a career in mind when he graduated from high school in Vineland, N.J., in 2001.