An Ohio tourism slogan from the 1980s and ’90s, “the Heart of It All,” still rings true today for the state’s fresh produce industry. Buyers and sellers can indeed find it all in the strategically located Buckeye State, from sweet corn, squash, and pumpkins to apples, pears, and strawberries.
One supplier goes even further: “When Ohio produce is in season, I think it’s the best in the world,” says Tim Parker, vice president at Son’s Packaging, a fresh-cut processor and repacker in Akron.
Wholesalers and Terminal Markets
Ohio’s two longtime produce terminals—the Columbus Produce Terminal and the Northern Ohio Food Terminal—are snapshots of industry change. Cincinnati no longer has a produce terminal but is a major receiver as the home of Kroger, as well as the Castellinni Group of Companies.
Smaller homegrown wholesale deals are on the rise in southern Ohio and northern Kentucky. Most recently, Ohio has become a destination for greenhouse producers: the largest is a 45-acre NatureFresh Farms location, north of Dayton.
Changing Times
The Columbus terminal is newer, opening as a co-op in May 1964. Over time, share ownership consolidated: “Macaluso Fruit ended up owning all the shares in the terminal,” explains Jamie Sanfillipo, a partner and sales manager for Sanfillipo Produce Company.
Sanfillipo purchased the Columbus terminal from Macaluso in 2014. The 20-bay terminal is full, with Sanfillipo’s operations and five tenants. “We came here in 2005 and rented one of the twenty 2,000-square foot bays in the terminal,” recalls Sanfillipo. “By 2012, we were occupying 12 bays. We were paying more rent than what the mortgage would have been on the building, so we decided to make an offer on the terminal along with buying out Macaluso Fruit.”
The Northern Ohio Food Terminal, in Cleveland, opened on a 34-acre rail hub site in 1929. By the 1950s, it was home to more than 100 tenants but occupancy declined as vendors left or consolidated. The terminal enjoys location advantages, evidenced by new receiving and packing facilities built nearby, but was at less than half occupancy in late 2017. Two longtime Cleveland terminal tenants, Forest City Weingart Produce Company and Cavalier-Gulling-Wilson, ceased operations in early 2017.
The Cleveland exits opened the door for a new tenant, moving operations from Canton. “We saw the opportunity here and moved in April (2017),” states Paul Kasapis, president at P.K. Produce, Inc., calling the Food Terminal “a one-stop shop.”
An Ohio tourism slogan from the 1980s and ’90s, “the Heart of It All,” still rings true today for the state’s fresh produce industry. Buyers and sellers can indeed find it all in the strategically located Buckeye State, from sweet corn, squash, and pumpkins to apples, pears, and strawberries.
One supplier goes even further: “When Ohio produce is in season, I think it’s the best in the world,” says Tim Parker, vice president at Son’s Packaging, a fresh-cut processor and repacker in Akron.
Wholesalers and Terminal Markets
Ohio’s two longtime produce terminals—the Columbus Produce Terminal and the Northern Ohio Food Terminal—are snapshots of industry change. Cincinnati no longer has a produce terminal but is a major receiver as the home of Kroger, as well as the Castellinni Group of Companies.
Smaller homegrown wholesale deals are on the rise in southern Ohio and northern Kentucky. Most recently, Ohio has become a destination for greenhouse producers: the largest is a 45-acre NatureFresh Farms location, north of Dayton.
Changing Times
The Columbus terminal is newer, opening as a co-op in May 1964. Over time, share ownership consolidated: “Macaluso Fruit ended up owning all the shares in the terminal,” explains Jamie Sanfillipo, a partner and sales manager for Sanfillipo Produce Company.
Sanfillipo purchased the Columbus terminal from Macaluso in 2014. The 20-bay terminal is full, with Sanfillipo’s operations and five tenants. “We came here in 2005 and rented one of the twenty 2,000-square foot bays in the terminal,” recalls Sanfillipo. “By 2012, we were occupying 12 bays. We were paying more rent than what the mortgage would have been on the building, so we decided to make an offer on the terminal along with buying out Macaluso Fruit.”
The Northern Ohio Food Terminal, in Cleveland, opened on a 34-acre rail hub site in 1929. By the 1950s, it was home to more than 100 tenants but occupancy declined as vendors left or consolidated. The terminal enjoys location advantages, evidenced by new receiving and packing facilities built nearby, but was at less than half occupancy in late 2017. Two longtime Cleveland terminal tenants, Forest City Weingart Produce Company and Cavalier-Gulling-Wilson, ceased operations in early 2017.
The Cleveland exits opened the door for a new tenant, moving operations from Canton. “We saw the opportunity here and moved in April (2017),” states Paul Kasapis, president at P.K. Produce, Inc., calling the Food Terminal “a one-stop shop.”
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.
South of I-70, which crosses below the state’s midsection, is another hotbed of agricultural activity near Cincinnati. Alice Chalmers can attest to the region’s fertile fields. As the founder and general manager of the Ohio Valley Food Connection, LLC, Chalmers runs a food hub that receives fruits and vegetables from growers then distributes to restaurants and specialty retailers in the Cincinnati area.
“We source from 70 farms within 110 miles of here and specialize in produce harvested within 24 hours,” she explains. “There are also growing pockets of commercial produce, especially pumpkins and some hard squash, on southern Ohio farms traditionally growing tobacco.”
Marketing: Ohio Proud
When it comes to fruit, apples are plentiful but vie for attention against pears, plums, grapes, and a bevy of seasonal berries. “Don’t forget Ohio strawberries,” touts Lori Panda, senior program manager of the state’s Ohio Proud marketing initiative, of the highly popular perennial.
Operating as part of the Ohio Depart-ment of Agriculture, the Ohio Proud program celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary in 2018. “Ohio Proud was created to increase sales and awareness of Ohio food and agricultural products,” Panda says, and by all accounts, has done so exceeding well. A celebration to mark the milestone will take place at the 2018 Ohio State Fair.
Some might be surprised to know organizations and companies that sell and promote Ohio Proud products, but do not grow them, can also participate in the program by becoming affiliate members. Retailers, distributors, and restaurants can use the Ohio Proud logo for any products licensed by the program and be listed on the Ohio Proud website. This expands awareness of the program and further supports buy-local initiatives.
Labor and Pest Challenges
Unlike many other production areas in the United States, labor is not a significant obstacle for grower-shippers in Ohio.
“We seem to have close to adequate labor force available,” observes Holthouse, who says the region remains popular with workers, since it’s a long season with mild weather, and many growers pay overtime.
The other major challenge for growers, pests and disease, is heavily influenced by weather, such as a too-warm winter or heavy rains and flooding, like what occured in February around Cincinnati.
Experienced growers generally have a handle on managing the Midwest’s sometimes rampant humidity and resulting pests, but certainly appreciate when Mother Nature cooperates with the growing cycle.
Area Trends Ohio’s rich commercial produce industry is evolving, as the state becomes a destination for large, state-of-the-art greenhouses. Mucci Farms announced a site development in Huron, while Red Sun Farm’s GoldenFresh has a 20-acre hydroponic greenhouse northwest of Columbus, in Wapakoneta. In Delta, west of Toledo, NatureFresh Farms operates 45 acres of greenhouse production. All three companies have substantial operations in Ontario, North America’s top greenhouse-growing region.
There are also small conventional and organic farms, as well as urban greenhouse operations, all helping fulfill rising consumer demand. “Ohio has very deep roots with local produce, farmers’ markets, the Amish, and Mennonites,” observes Andrew Reist, produce buyer and manager of Jungle Jim’s Produce, a specialty retailer in Fairfield, near Cincinnati.
While many large wholesale operations deal mostly in conventional crops, organics are on the rise. “I do think organics is a huge category the produce industry should not take lightly,” suggests Reist, who believes the category has many dedicated, organics-only converts who should not be ignored.
Another hot trend revolves around Ohio’s ethnic and immigrant populations, who are demanding more diverse produce options. “Ethnic restaurants are exploding,” declares Sanfillipo, in Columbus. “We’ve had a huge influx of people from Nepal and India. I bring in trucks twice a week, two from Florida and two from California, just with specialty products most people would have never heard of—from snake gourds to ratalu (purple yams) to callaloo (amaranth taro), to others most people don’t know.”
Cooking shows on television and the internet are also lending a hand, notes Walker, encouraging consumers to try new dishes, combining healthy recipes with lesser known or resurgent fruits and vegetables.
Familiar trends are continuing too. “Hispanic just gets bigger and bigger every year,” observes Sanfillipo, and Holthouse agrees, noting an uptick in jalapeños and cilantro. Last year was also a strong one for spaghetti squash shipments, from late August to late October, says Holthouse.
Downtown redevelopment, especially in Cleveland and Cincinnati, is also contributing. “People are eating in downtown Cleveland; everything has picked up there, and that business has come back to all of us,” points out Kasapis.
Chalmers agrees. “There’s a lot of redevelopment in Cincinnati, even outside downtown like in West Chester,” says Chalmers. “Covington and Newport, KY, are also seeing similar redevelopment and growth. Latino and Asian cuisines are quite popular,” she affirms.
Cleveland and Cuyahoga County are taking on the issue of food deserts or neigborhoods in the area lacking supermarket access. The Health Improvement Partnership-Cuyahoga Consortium Supermarket Coalition held its first meeting late last year. The group hopes to leverage local and state grants to attract food retailers to open hard hit areas, including East Cleveland.
Future Outlook From miles and miles of verdant fields to stunning greenhouses, receivers and retailers have plenty of produce flowing to their doors in Ohio. Add in its position in the Midwest, at the nexus of many interstates, and the Buckeye State is not only a seasonal powerhouse but a year-round supplier of note.
Another way of saying it, with a nod to the old marketing campaign and state pride, comes from Tim Parker at Son’s Packaging in Akron: “Ohio is, after all, the Heart of It All.”
