The Produce Industry Podcast w/ Patrick Kelly

This week on Fresh From the Field Fridays, Dan The Produce Man is serving up a table full of summer flavor! From Yumi watermelon and Adriatic figs to Northwest cherries, Stockton sweet red onions, serpent cucumbers, fresh-picked berries, rhubarb, butter lettuce, domestic shiitake mushrooms, juicy plums, and expert tips on choosing the perfect peach—it's all here. Brought to you by the Produce Indu...

Why did a monk in a Moravian monastery spend eight years counting 30,000 pea plants — and how did the number three to one unlock the secret of heredity that Charles Darwin couldn't solve? Why did Gregor Mendel publish one of the greatest scientific discoveries of the nineteenth century to almost complete silence, only for his paper to be rediscovered thirty-four years later by three scientists who...

Before the gas flares and the glass towers, before the air conditioning and the sovereign wealth fund, what did Qatar actually have? Why was a single tree the difference between survival and starvation on one of the most inhospitable peninsulas on Earth? How did a brutal, debt-ridden pearl economy collapse almost overnight — and at whose hands? And how does a country go, in a single human lifetime...

Why did the Khoisan people of South Africa spend nine years in legal negotiations to receive 1.5 percent of an industry built entirely on knowledge they had held for three centuries — and what does that tell us about who owns a plant? How did a Russian-Jewish immigrant with a mule cart, a country doctor with a germination problem, and a mother with an allergic infant between them turn a mountain b...

This week's Global Fresh Series takes you to the biggest stage—that could also be fresh produce's biggest opportunity, the FIFA 2026 World Cup to explore how growers, marketers, retailers, commodity boards, and foodservice operators can leverage the world's biggest sporting event. With 48 nations competing across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, billions of viewers, millions of visitors, and...

Why does a town of 20,000 people in central Tunisia contain the third largest Roman amphitheatre ever built - and what does a structure that seated 35,000 people tell us about what olive oil money could buy? How did a Phoenician agricultural manual become the only document the Roman Senate preserved when they burned Carthage to the ground? And why do archaeologists now believe Tunisia was not just...

How did a storm-battered Spanish ship, a Dundee harbour, and a grocer's wife with a pan full of unsaleable bitter oranges accidentally create one of the first registered trademarks in British history — and a product that would end up on breakfast tables from Edinburgh to Bombay? Why did the family fortune from that single kitchen experiment eventually pay for the restoration of Avebury, one of the...

Why did the Visigoths demand three thousand pounds of black pepper as the ransom for Rome — and what does that tell us about a climbing vine in Kerala that reshaped the entire history of the western world? How did a country of one million people on the edge of Europe come to control half the pepper reaching the continent, and build the Jerónimos Monastery to celebrate a voyage driven by spice? And...

Join host Patrick Kelly as he sits down with industry legend Mayda Sotomayor-Kirk at the Seal Suite headquarters in Vero Beach. Discover Mayda's incredible immigrant story, her rise as a female leader in a male-dominated produce industry, and her pivotal role in shaping the global citrus market including the South African citrus program. This episode reminds us all why storytelling, resilience, an...

This week on Fresh From The Field Fridays, Dan The Produce Man brings another helping of produce knowledge, seasonal insights, and practical tips you can use the next time you shop. On the produce table are Dulcinea Tuscan cantaloupes and one of the great fruit debates: What's the difference between Royal apricots, Blenheim apricots, and Royal Blenheim apricots? Are they one and the same, or are t...

Why did Norwegian farmers believe that eating potatoes would give them leprosy — and who were the potato priests who spent fifty years smuggling tubers home from Copenhagen in their hats to prove them wrong? How did a Napoleonic blockade finally force an entire nation to accept a vegetable it had resisted for a century? And why did one historian argue that the potato mattered more to the Norwegian...

How did twenty-four rabbits released by one man for a "spot of hunting" in 1859 colonise an entire continent within thirty-five years — and why did a three-thousand-kilometre fence, a campaign of poisoning, and even the deliberate introduction of foxes all fail to stop them? Who was Dame Jean Macnamara, the doctor who had already helped defeat polio and then spent twenty years fighting institution...

Why did Cleopatra demand the balsam groves of Jericho as the price of financing Marc Antony's wars — and what does it mean that a plant worth twice its weight in gold was guarded day and night by Roman soldiers after the conquest of Jerusalem? What was the balm of Gilead, the most expensive agricultural commodity in the ancient world, and why did it grow nowhere on Earth except the shores of the D...

In this episode of the Global Fresh Series Podcast , we explore how Europe’s potato industry — especially Belgium’s iconic frozen fry sector — was hit by a massive agricultural and economic crisis in 2026. Beyond potatoes, the episode is a broader story about globalization, supply chains, farming economics, and the uncertainty facing the next generation of agricultural producers. At its heart, The...

Why has the argan tree — which grows nowhere else on Earth — survived for 65 million years in the mountains of Morocco, and why are the women who have tended it for centuries now earning two euros sixty for a litre of oil that sells for a hundred in Paris? Who was Zoubida Charrouf, the chemist who gave scientific language to what Amazigh women had always known, and built a cooperative movement tha...

Why did a Valencia orange, abandoned on a tiny arid Caribbean island, transform into a new species that nobody could eat — and how did that inedible fruit end up in cocktail bars on every continent? What made the harbour of Willemstad one of the most consequential trading posts in the Atlantic world, and what does the story of Sephardic refugees, the slave trade, and a language assembled from seve...

How did a city of 30,000 people survive for 450 years between Venice and the Ottoman Empire — and what does the Republic of Ragusa have to do with the cherry on top of your cocktail? Why does the American maraschino cherry share almost nothing with the Croatian original except a name? And how did one man, escaping a burning city in a rowboat in 1944, carry a single cherry sapling across the Adriat...

Join host Patrick Kelly as he sits down with Antoni Porowski , beloved Queer Eye chef and food storyteller, at the CPMA 2026 Annual Conference. Discover how Antoni Porowski bridges the produce supply chain and culinary worlds, shares fresh salad inspirations with Fresh Express, and reveals simple yet exciting ways to elevate your meals with produce. Whether you're a food enthusiast or industry ins...

This week on Fresh from the Field Fridays, Dan the Produce Man welcomes Dr. Joel Fuhrman, board-certified family physician, seven-time New York Times bestselling author, and internationally recognized expert in nutrition and disease prevention. In this thought-provoking conversation, Dr. Fuhrman explains what it means to be a Nutritarian, the importance of nutrient density, the health benefits of...

Why did France's black truffle — once produced in the thousands of tonnes — collapse to near-extinction in a century, and what does its revival reveal about the country's relationship with luxury, landscape, and desire? Who are the truffle thieves stalking the oak groves of the Périgord with poisoned meatballs and stolen dogs? And why does a near-identical Chinese impostor, worth one-seventieth of...

Why did the cloud forests of Ecuador produce the only cure for a disease that killed popes, hollowed out armies, and blocked European expansion into the tropics — and what did the people whose knowledge made that cure possible pay for sharing it? Who was Manuel Incra Mamani, the man whose botanical expertise created the Dutch quinine monopoly, whose name is on nothing, and who was beaten to death...

Why did a South American legume become the foundation of French imperial power in West Africa — and what did it cost the people who grew it? Who was Cheikh Amadou Bamba, the Sufi mystic the French exiled twice but could never destroy, whose followers built a religious empire on peanut fields? And how did a single crop simultaneously build the city of Dakar, finance two world wars, and trap an inde...

Join me for a fun, reflective, and produce-filled farewell to Greece as I wrap up an unforgettable month abroad—one conversation, one supermarket, and one peach at a time. 🇬🇷🍑🥒 After a month of living and working as a digital nomad in Athens, it’s time for a final stroll through the streets, markets, and produce aisles of Greece. In this episode of the Global Fresh Series , I reflect on the litt...

Why did tobacco, and not gold or glory, save the first permanent English colony in America? How did the Founding Fathers' tobacco debts to British merchants help light the fuse of the American Revolution? And who were the Tobacco Lords — the scarlet-cloaked Glasgow merchants who controlled more of the British tobacco trade than London, Bristol, and Liverpool combined? Join John and Patrick in the...

From Indigenous sugar shacks to the Supreme Court of Canada… how did maple syrup become one of the world’s most tightly controlled commodities? Why does Quebec maintain a vast strategic maple syrup reserve? And how did a group of “barrel rollers” steal nearly $19 million worth of syrup in the most Canadian crime of all time? Join Patrick and John as they explore the history of maple syrup, the ris...