Foxfire 9 by Foxfire Fund Inc

Author:Foxfire Fund, Inc. [Wigginton, Eliot]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-75737-1
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2010-11-09T16:00:00+00:00

Jim, one of Earl’s three sons, got into the produce business through his father and is still in it today. He added a fitting conclusion to this article:

Daddy’s big customers later on were Kroger, which used to be the Rogers Company, and Winn Dixie which was Dixie then. I still sell to them.

The shelf life of the cabbage that Daddy used to work with was maybe two or three weeks without refrigeration. Now the cabbage will hold up two days without refrigeration. The cabbage now is grown for speed. Back then it would take at least a hundred and twenty days for it to mature. It grew nice and slow. Now we have seventy-five-day cabbage. Back then every head was placed in the truck by hand and done very slowly and carefully with every head pointed one way and the stalks pushed down. It made them look better. Now we have harvest crews just dumping it into a cart, then dumping it into a box, then loading it on a truck. Now, that’s handled three times. Then it goes to a chain store. Then the chain stores deliver it to the outlet store like Winn Dixie. Then it goes on the shelf. So you go in the store and say this produce stinks, but it has been handled four to six times. Back then everything was slow and easy and they took pride in their produce. You still try to take pride in it, but it’s just such a fast-moving thing now. That is the change in the produce Daddy was working with. He had time to work with it and market it. Now you have a matter of days to market it.

One of the most interesting things is that the produce business is one of the last big businesses where still today there are no signed contracts. You phone the people from, say, Kroger and a price is agreed on. It makes no difference if the price goes up between the time that you make the deal and the time you sell them. I mean you readjust for your next load, but you get the agreed-on price for the last one, no matter what the market does. It is still just one of the old businesses where nothing is in writing. It is all your word over the telephone.

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