The International Fresh Produce Association has spent much of the first quarter of the year bringing industry insights to international audiences.

Beginning in February in Berlin, a team from IFPA traveled to Fruit Logistica to meet with industry members at the yearly European based event. In conjunction with the conference, IFPA hosted the Executive Leadership Conference, welcoming leaders from more than 30 countries to hear from experts and peers on a variety of topics critical to global business. IFPA expert Tamara Muruetagoiena provided the look at the latest trends in sustainability

In an ongoing effort to make fresh food more accessible, Meijer expanded its Flashfood program, making it the first retailer nationwide to accept Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits through the app that allows customers to purchase surplus close-dated food at a deep discount.

In partnership with Flashfood, Meijer is now accepting the payment capability at all its Midwest supercenters and Meijer Grocery stores, which allows customers with SNAP benefits to pay for their Flashfood orders using an Electronic Benefits Transfer card in the Flashfood app.

"As a company committed to

The driest California drought in a century has made a significant turnaround this winter from all the atmospheric river rain and mountain snowpack. The ground is beyond saturation to a point where it is actually surging back up from the earth.

California agriculture accounts for 80 percent of all the water usage in the state. It irrigates over 9 million acres from rivers, lakes, reservoirs through aqueducts and canals feeding the farmlands.

Year to date, California has had 25 inches of precipitation, an average of 142 percent. The Northern California area snowpack of water equivalent has

Hy-Vee Inc. will host a quarterly Best of Local Brands Summit in May to expand and enhance the product offerings at its more than 285 retail stores in Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wisconsin. Since the Best of Local Brands summits began in early 2021, more than 125 new brands have been selected and are available to Hy-Vee customers.

This year, Hy-Vee continues to elevate its efforts of identifying suppliers with diverse backgrounds and encourages minority- and women-owned businesses to apply for the quarterly summits.

The summit will consist of 15-

The online grocery market finished last month with $8.8 billion in total sales, up 1.5 percent compared to last year, according to the monthly Brick Meets Click/Mercatus Grocery Shopping Survey. Excluding Ship-to-Home sales, the core eGrocery segments of Delivery and Pickup slipped 1.2 percent compared to last year, which reflects a drop of almost 9 percent in Delivery sales and a gain of nearly 5 percent for Pickup during the month.

The year-over-year growth in eGrocery sales was partly driven by an increase in monthly active users, which climbed more than 5 percent in February compared to

With most of Monterey County already dealing with significant impacts from a series of rainstorms, today (March 13) the area was bracing for another atmospheric river that is expected to dump even more rain on the deluged county tonight.

“From the southern part of the Monterey County where the Salinas River has overtopped its banks and flooded the community of San Ardo and agricultural land to the northern part of the county where there has been a levee breach on the Pajaro River, which has put that town underground, virtually everyone is affected,” said Nicholas Pasculli, Monterey County