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Ohio is Produce Proud

Tradition, location, and innovation keep the Buckeye State growing
MS_Ohio Barn

Kasapis says business was brisk in 2017, with especially strong watermelon sales and a good selection of local produce. “The Ohio season wrapped up this year around the first week of November,” he notes, adding “Business has been good.” Better yet, Kasapis is happy to buy local and keep the money in the community.

In Columbus, Sanfillipo Produce continues to make improvements on the market. “Ever since we bought it, we’ve been doing upgrades,” recounts Sanfillipo, “to get everything up to the standards for a food grade facility. This place is 40,000 square feet of warehouse with 55,000 square feet under one roof with the docks,” he says.

Location, too, is a prime advantage on three fronts; first, is within the city itself. “From here, you can be at all four corners of the city within about 25 minutes,” says Sanfillipo. Second, the market is right across from the airport: “We fly produce in five times a week from Los Angeles, and I just have to go across the street to pick it up,” he notes. And third, a major selling point for all the merchants operating in the area, is being within a day’s drive of most of the nation’s big population centers, with major truck corridors crisscrossing the state.

Production, Marketing, Shipping
Vegetables grown in parts of Northern Ohio are often called “muck crops,” a name saluting soil rich in decaying organic matter like algae. Celeryville, in Huron County, is in the center of the muck crops region, but its namesake vegetable no longer anchors area shipments as other commodities have become more plentiful.

One example is radishes, many grown by multigenerational farmers. “The farms we sell for [ship] overnight delivery to over half of the U.S. population,” shares Jeff Walker, in sales at T C Marketing, Inc. in Napo-leon, southeast of Toledo, which specializes in state-grown radishes. “They’re also family-run and have been since 1896,” he adds.

Other Northern Ohio favorites include “peppers, tomatoes, zucchini, yellow squash, chili peppers, eggplant, winter squash, and carrots,” according to Kirk Holthouse, vice president at Holthouse Farms of Ohio, Inc., in Willard, just north of Celeryville. “Our season is typically May to November; when we’re in season, the quality of Ohio produce is really outstanding.”

Huron County is one of the country’s top 100 fresh vegetable producers, with more than 4,000 acres. Sandusky and Henry counties, toward Toledo, each ship from more than 2,000 acres. Well established sweet corn grower-shippers populate the region south of Cleveland and east of Akron and Canton. “The Hartville area is an important producer for us,” notes Parker of Son’s Packaging.

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