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GRAPHIC: Avocados’ Super Bowl season

- Analysis
No produce department item has such an association with the Super Bowl as avocados. Historically, 20 percent of annual avocado sales occur around the big game in early February.

ProduceIQ: White onions crowned king as prices soar

- Featured
Though overall industry prices range from stable to slightly declining, the ProduceIQ Index remains +12 percent higher for week #4 than in any prior year.  Industry prices typically decline over the next six weeks and then begin to ascend in later March as volume from Mexico tapers off.

Legislation proposed to freeze AEWR

- Analysis
The federal H-2A program for agricultural guestworkers has long been an object of complaint for fruit and vegetable growers.

ECIP helps implement fair labor practices

- Analysis
Ethical labor practices have been an issue in the fruit and vegetable industry for decades. But only in recent years has the industry attempted to outline and implement fair labor practices in an organized way.

On the horizon: quinoa leafy greens

- Analysis
Many people are familiar with quinoa, whose seeds are used as a kind of grain; it is rapidly becoming incorporated into mainstream diets. But has anyone heard of eating quinoa greens?

Remedies for cantaloupe’s food safety problems

- Analysis
FDA may have ruled that the latest string of outbreaks of cantaloupe-linked salmonella is over, but food safety litigator Bill Marler is understandably exercised about the persistent problem.

Minimum wages, blue and red

- Analysis
There is a huge discussion going on about polarization along political and cultural lines in the U.S. One area where this cleft is most apparent is state minimum wages.

ProduceIQ: Someone, please turn on the heat

- Featured
As you can imagine, crops like tomatoes and cucumbers that fled South with the rest of Florida’s snowbirds wonder if the driver was using Apple Maps and missed a turn somewhere.

A clean way to kill fungus and soft-bodied pests

- Analysis
Terra Vera is a company founded in 2020 that attempts to solve this problem by creating products for pest control that are both environmentally safe and cost-effective.

A rough climate for corporate mergers

- Analysis
The climate for corporate mergers isn’t looking too good right now, as the supermarket retail chains Kroger and Albertsons have announced that they are delaying their highly publicized and extremely controversial merger,