Bako Sweet is encouraging retailers to prepare for February merchandising strategies that highlight heart health and nutrition. With February recognized as both Heart Health Month and National Sweet Potato Month, this period presents a prime opportunity to drive consumer engagement and sales with heart-smart choices like Bako Sweet Potatoes.

United Natural Foods Inc. is taking actions to advance the company’s multi-year strategy focused on creating more customized value for its customers and suppliers and driving profitable growth.

In support of its strategy, the company will realign its commercial wholesale organization into two product-centered divisions, conventional grocery products and natural, organic, specialty and fresh products, while continuing to enhance its enterprise-wide commercial and supply chain capabilities.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s updates to the Marketing Assistance for Specialty Crops initiative include an additional $650 million investment.

“Specialty crop growers across the U.S. are facing severe and unique challenges. As we wrote in December, the USDA’s MASC program is an important step in helping growers recover from this economic battering, and with today’s announcement, we are grateful to the USDA for recognizing that even more was needed," the Specialty Crop Farm Bill Alliance said in a statement.

Tropical fruit grower and importer Tierra Suelta is seeing strong volumes of high-quality, Florida-grown star fruit.