Fruits and vegetables in every shape, and some deal-making, come to a massive expo in Monterey.

Sara Rubin here after seeing potatoes in every color, tomatoes in every shape, and lettuce in dozens of varieties. The expo at the International Fresh Produce Association’s annual foodservice conference took over the Monterey Conference Center Friday morning with towers of produce (and plenty of swag) grown all over the world, including lots from right here in the Salinas Valley. 

Hundreds of prospective foodservice buyers—including tons of school districts, from Soledad to Little Rock to Houston—walked around the floor where they could learn about chopped onions, sliced mushrooms or salad mixes available. 

Lots of local growers and shippers were represented—Foxy products from the Nunes Company (accompanied by adorable stuffed fox toys among the heads of lettuce and bundles of baby cauliflower), Driscoll’s with a variety of berries, Royal Rose with deep purple radicchio and frilly frisee—alongside purveyors of citrus and avocados from other regions. 

The event comes at a time that many suppliers are observing a drop-off in demand, some of it seasonal as regularly happens in late summer, some of it a consumer reaction to the cyclospora outbreak (happening elsewhere, outside of California) that involves avoiding lettuce even in places where there are no advisories to do so. 

“Demand has taken a turn,” Henry Dill from D’Arrigo Bros. told me. Without a buyer, growers may simply end up disking crops into the soil. 

But a big event like this is less focused on the immediate response to an outbreak than the longer-term future. School and university cafeterias will again feed millions of students this school year, and there was a lot of talk about how to get more kids eating more fruits and vegetables. 

During breakout sessions this morning, I sat with a group discussing how to get more people, particularly young people, excited about eating produce. A representative from the California Department of Food and Agriculture said his push is to give out grants for school gardens, which seem to always help (recently, he encountered a group of tweens who thought carrots grew on trees). 

Adriana Rose Frias, a marketing specialist for Duda Farm Fresh Foods in Salinas, remembered the challenges of her own childhood: “When I was 9 years old, if my mom said, ‘here, eat this cucumber,’ I wouldn’t get excited about it.” 

Chips and candy are hard to compete with for a variety of reasons, including the inherent variation in produce—no two apples taste the same. Duda fields calls from customers asking why there is dirt on their celery, perhaps unaware that celery grows in the dirt. Frias hopes to see a big back-to-school season marketing push, promoting nutrition and wellness, along with flavor. (I hope they leave celery out of that messaging—let’s be honest, it has very little leverage in the snack realm unless it’s covered in peanut butter or cream cheese.)

“Consumers do not know about produce. It’s our job to plant the seed wherever we go,” she said. 

It might be hard to plant that seed in the wake of a massive outbreak, but the event made clear that there will still be sellers and buyers.