Growing Regions/Weather
Since weather plays such a pivotal role in our industry we are constantly keeping up with conditions in most of the major growing areas in the United States and around the world. We have provided the following links for your convenience along with a brief summary of some of the items we source in those areas.
Yakima, Washington: Primary growing region for apples, pears, cherries, tree fruit and some tuber vegetables.
Salinas, California: Primary growing region for summer vegetables and strawberries. Vegetables include but are not limited to lettuce, broccoli, celery, artichokes, cauliflower and all leaf items that comprise the bag salad lines.
Fresno, California: Due to its arid climate, Fresno has long been the center of grape and tree fruit production for the United States during the summer months. There are also many varieties of citrus produced in that area as well.
Yuma, Arizona: Thanks to irrigation Yuma has become the primary growing area in the United States for winter vegetable production. Essentially when Salinas finishes production ( usually around Thanksgiving weekend ) the entire growing operation relocates to the desert in and around the Yuma area.
Pompano Beach, Florida: Pompano Beach has become a vast distribution point for vegetables grown in south Florida. With many winter time vegetables grown in the area it is important to keep tabs on the weather in that region.
Amsterdam, Netherlands: Although not as dependent on outdoor weather conditions since most of the items in this growing region are “Green House” grown, we still like to keep tabs on this area of Europe.
The trade associations help promote and market particular commodity groups for the growers they represent. W.R. Vernon works closely with numerous trade associations around the country to gather product and category information. These associations are vital to our customers because they provide an enormous amount of information that is targeted to the consumer. We work hard to gather any type of information that helps advertise and promote each commodity group.
The following list are some of the associations that we do work with and have worked with over the years to help our customers be successful.