The USDA Farm Service Agency announced appointees Al Murray, Erick Doyle, Rajesh Sinha and Anna Trapani, who will serve on the New Jersey USDA Farm Service Agency state committee. Murray was named the chair of the committee.

This year is shaping up to be a good one for California table grapes according to Sunview Marketing International. Sunview, headquartered in Delano, CA, has been growing premium quality table grapes in the central valley for more than seventy years.

“In our expert opinion, this year’s grape season outlook is looking very strong –– we are excited about supplying our fresh grapes to our retail partners and consumers worldwide,” said Mitch Wetzel, vice president of sales and Marketing.

Before discussing the 2022 New Jersey spring produce deal, Rich Marolda Jr. of Marolda Farms spoke a bit about the weather over the previous winter and so far this spring.

“Winter for us was pretty uneventful,” he told The Produce News. “The beginning of the winter was mild, then it came on heavier at the end into the spring. There was some late cold weather into the spring which held us back. Spring has been cold, but the crops come on, and things are starting to level off now.”

The fully automated Sunsortai machine, a next-generation sorter from Sunkist Research and Technical Services, looks to make sorting and grading of citrus fruit just a lot easier. The new sorter uses Google AI technology to assess the inherent quality of each piece it processes, including any potential defects.

There’s a lot of energy and excitement this time of year as table grape season ramps up in California. In 2021 California grape growers harvested more than 97 million boxes of table grapes — an estimated crop value of $2.1 billion — per the California Table Grape Commission. Furthermore, those numbers represent 99 percent of all commercially grown grapes in the United States.

The Kroger Co. has launched a digital farmers market in Atlanta in partnership with Market Wagon. Developed as an e-commerce marketplace for local farmers and businesses, the service is a digital platform that offers customers a wide range of fresh, local products.

The delivery-only service offers a uniquely local assortment of over 1,150 local products by grouping local vendors together, including local farmers, bakeries and food artisans. All items found on Kroger Farmers Market are exclusive to the service and cannot yet be found at Kroger stores.