Demo Day! International Fresh Produce Assoc. (Vonnie Estes)

Demo Day for the International Fresh Produce Association new fresh Field Catalyst
Date: Wednesday, August 20, 2025
Time: 9:30 AM – 4:00 PM PT
Location: Taylor Building, 150 Main Street, 3rd Floor, Salinas, California, USA

Learn more about the Fresh Field Catalyst program and this year’s cohort here.

https://www.freshproduce.com/resources/technology/fresh-field-catalyst/

Reach Out To : https://www.linkedin.com/in/vonnieestes/

https://anewearthproject.com/collections/new-earth-approved

Connect with Cory

Connect with Cory on LinkedIn here: 
https://www.linkedin.com/in/cory-connors/

I'm here to help you make your packaging more sustainable! Reach out today and I'll get back to you asap. 

This podcast is an independent production and the podcast production is an original work of the author. All rights of ownership and reproduction are retained—copyright 2022.

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Welcome to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connor's. today's guest is Vonnie Estes. She is the Vice President of Innovation at the International Fresh Produce Association. Hi, Vonny. How are you? I'm great. Thanks for having me on. Thanks for making time. I think what you're doing there at your association is really important to sustainable packaging and to food more importantly, overall for North America and beyond. But before we get into details, let's talk about you. what's your background? How'd you get into this, kind of area of specialty? Probably a little different than a lot of the people who are on your podcast. I started out in agriculture. I have a master's degree in plant pathology from University of California Davis, and was very much going down a research academic, track and then just realized that what I love doing is commercializing technology and really, taking science outta the lab and figuring out how do we grow food better. For people, not doing all the science behind it. So most of my career has been in that commercial development, commercialization path to market. How do we take science and apply it? And I've worked for startups, lots of startups and small companies, and also multinational agricultural companies, in that capacity. about, I guess it's been eight years ago I was doing some consulting and one of my clients, was David Margolis at Sun World. They're a table great company and he was interested in trying to figure out should I have gene editing in my program, which is one of the things I've worked on a lot. We did a bunch of work together, and then at the same time, he was the chairman of International Fresh Produce Association. Our earlier company was called, PMA, produce Marketing Association, but he was the chairman of the board and he said, we've got this new role that we're developing. we really need to bring more technology to our members in, in the association. I think you'd be great in that role. So I've been at IFPA for eight years and really it's been a great ride and being able to work all the way across the whole supply chain in produce. Sounds like a perfect background for this, and I think it's an impressive organization and, I'm excited to tell the audience here what you do and how you do it. So let's talk about that. What, you're the vice president of innovation. what does a normal day look like for you? What do you, what does your organization focus on? So what the, one of the great things about this job is there is no normal day. there's, I spend a lot of time, out in the field talking to members. I get to see crops being grown, packaged, processed. Shipped. I go to retailers and talk to retailers about what's happening, in retail with produce. So I really get to work across the whole supply chain, globally. Some of the projects that I work on that I, spend most of my time is, one, as we were talking about earlier, I have a podcast called Fresh Takes on Tech, and that podcast looks at bringing new technology into the produce industry. So the season that I'm doing right now is. On ai. And so it's been really fun. as doing a podcast is great. You get to talk to really smart people about what they're passionate about. So I, I've been talking to a bunch of people about AI and how AI is affecting agriculture. check that out if you're interested in some real applied AI uses. I also have a program that we'll talk more about. It's called the, fresh Field Catalyst program that's funded by USDA that, that I run, which, which is a. A year long program, and it's in its fourth year this year. Right. Wow, that's exciting. And, my in-laws are farmers. Oh. in Oregon, we, they grow, wheat, corn, sugar, beets, grass, and all kinds of different things. Pumpkins. so I, I. I can commiserate with farmers and appreciate their struggles and, the amount of hours that they put in is this absolutely mind boggling? And I have so much respect for anyone who grows food for anyone else. I think it's awesome. but let's talk about this event you have coming up here on the 20th. Can you tell us about it and, who should reach out to you to attend? as part of this program, the Fresh Food Catalyst Program, we have a grant from the USDA that we're trying to find, alternatives to single use plastic. And the reason that we're doing this is, the focus of this particular program is for export because we're really seeing that there's gonna be a lot of changes in regulations all around the world. The EU and Canada and India are some of the first, where there. Going to potentially put up some non tariff barriers for us to be shipping our products into these other countries. by wanting more sustain, demanding, more sustainable packaging and not using single use plastic. So that's, we've gotta respond to that if we wanna continue to export. And, packaging is so important in produce and it has some different functions and maybe some other industries that your listeners may be used. Too, but we're, we have to have really good packaging because of food safety. food safety is a huge issue. If you're not protecting that product, it's getting bruised. Pathogens get in there. We don't want that to happen. So it, we have to have something to take care of food safety. We also wanna cut down on food waste. And so if you don't have correct packaging, you can have a lot more food waste. we use packaging as a way to market, which is, what a lot of people do. But, yeah, so packaging is really important. And now we've got these new rules that are coming up and saying, well, you can't use single use plastics and single use plastics work really well. That's why we use them so much. And so trying to, what this program is doing is trying to. Help propel innovation in this area to have different kinds of materials, maybe to have coatings and just different types of technologies that we can bring in to the industry to solve this problem for our growers. So that's what the program is. So we, through the grant, through the USDA, we're able to give grants to companies. So we have nine companies that are in the program. They've gotten between 50 and$200,000 to work on a very specific. Project that will help solve this problem as part of that program, we're having a demo day, so that's what we're having in Salinas on August 20th. it's from nine 30 to around four in the afternoon, and it's an opportunity to bring in people from around the industry. That might be interested in these technologies that these nine companies have. they'll do a presentation, a 10 minute presentation, and then five minutes q and a, and then there'll be lots of time during the day. to interact with the companies and find out more about them. So anyone that's interested in, both the technology, we're gonna have a lot of large growers in the room who are, who need this kind of technology, but we're also gonna need people that know how to scale. You know, some of these technologies are, on the bench and they're gonna need a lot of help scaling. So anyone that is. either produces packaging or it has the use of packaging, I think would find use in the conversations of the day. This is so exciting. I've, been working with our mutual friend Andrew Stevens, on this program for years, or talking about it and, trying to promote it through Clemson and different organizations that have really taken the forefront of this. But, we always say there's nothing sustainable about rotten food. Yeah. And or damaged goods, really. Yeah. I think you're exactly right. The reason plastic has been used so, so much is 'cause it works. And so it's exciting to see these, alternatives. And these, maybe it's still plastic, but it's less, it's a smaller footprint that way. but I can't wait to go to this event, Don Meek and I'll be driving down there and excited to check it out. Great. Yeah. It's, so one thing, we are, it is invitation only.'cause we really wanna be sure that the people in the room can get something out of it. It's, it's a whole day. So we want people that, that can get something out of it and benefit. From it. And also that our companies get some benefit from their being there. So I would love to have, we have room for more people and would love to have more people come and, we can give them my email and people can get in touch with me. But I, this is an invitation to. People that are interested in listening. And we'll also have some, panels. I'll start the day, with someone from USDA, describing what the USDA is doing and getting a better understanding of some of the granting opportunities. And then, also have a plan, a panel with Kevin Kelly from Emerald Packaging. and we'll just talk about some of the issues around packaging, so it'll be informative and with the companies. And then, as I said, a lot of time to interact with growers in, the Salinas Valley and other packaging companies and just a good day of networking. That's awesome. I've got, just a few more questions for you here. one is, you mentioned non tariff barriers. I'd never heard that. Can you tell us what that means and, and is that. is a fee, is it a, how does that work? No. What, so what we're. Assuming may happen is that if people wanna respond to some of our tariffs But not put a tariff on our goods, they may put up barriers. Like you have to have packaging that looks exactly like this. So then if we're not complying, that becomes a trade barrier. So it's not a tariff, but it becomes a trade barrier for us. And so we wanna be able to, adapt to those types of changes so that those aren't trade barriers to us. That's great. I hadn't thought about it like that, but that makes perfect sense. People are gonna retaliate to these, tariffs. It just makes sense. And they're gonna, there's all these infighting it seems like, so let's hope those get smoothed out. Here soon. But you mentioned there's nine different, things that you're gonna be showing at at this event. Can you talk to us about maybe one or two of those that you're really excited about? Yeah, I think, some of these companies are companies that, you know, like Quick Lock. I'm, if people don't know Quick Lock, they really do know Quick Lock. If you've ever opened, if you've ever opened a bag of bread and there's that little, plastic thing at the top, that's quick lock, so they're a great company. we use their products already in the produce industry, but what the project that we're supporting that they're working on is compostable hanging tags. That are, so those will be compostable. And also they'll have traceability information on it. So that's one, type of technology that if USDA didn't put money into developing that, that may not get developed because that would, that's costing quick lock money. So those are the types of things that are really exciting that, it's a established company that they'll be able to scale that. That's what I love about, companies that size is like, okay, we've got it. We're gone. we know how to do this. Another on the other end of the spectrum is a small company, here in Berkeley, in California that's called Sway. And they're trying to use algae as a coating that, so that you don't have to like, wrap cucumbers in plastic or, use different kinds of plastic. but you can use this. This coating made of algae and they're a little earlier on in their lifecycle of development, but, so we've got people in all, different areas. We've got companies that are using, as you mentioned, just less, less plastic. There's plastic, but it's some, it's, I think 25% less on the rest of it is like plant-based, plastic. Type material. another, we've got a company from Argentina that's got an edible coating for produce as well. That's, that they're trying to get out and work with different types of crops. so the, it's a great range and that's why we picked them. We went through a, anybody that's gotten a grant, a government grant knows that, the process is long and hard and lots of Excel sheets. Forms to fill out. So all of these companies went through that and they all were peer reviewed by three different peer reviewers through the foundation of, food. applied food research helped us with the process of getting, these selected. And so they're, they've been highly curated, to be something that we think we can get into the industry quickly. That sounds great. I did meet the team from Quick Lock at an event, and I was really impressed with their innovations for something so simple that we all use every day that we don't think about it. there's that debate. Do you put it back on or do you spin the bag and you put it back in without it, and you throw away the. The piece. but in our house we like to reuse them. Yeah. and I'm big fan of Sway. We, certainly partner with them at Atlantic Packaging. They're a great company and, can't wait to, will it be Julia Marsh there or do you know who will be representing? I'm not sure who's coming to the meeting, but I think they're still talking about it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, exciting news, and I can't wait for this. And I think one thing that people don't realize about this, fund is that there's more money coming. And so I, if you're listening and you've got an innovative solution, that you want to, help, you need some help funding, reach out to the USDA, reach out to this, organization to, improve your chances to maybe get some of that money for research and development or implementation or whatever the case may be. Yeah, it's, $25 million total over three years. And we, through my association, we're getting 5 million of that to spread out over three years. Clemson University you mentioned is also getting $5 million, and so the way that. We've divided it up is that we're working with technologies that are ready to scale and go into the market. Clemson's really focusing on earlier stage technologies that may need some more time. And they just selected companies that they're gonna be working with or technologies. Some of them are universities. but this program will go on for three years, so there'll be another process. Like this next year where people come in, even if they've got very early stage things or they've got later stage things and can work with us. So thanks for bringing that up. That it, it's, there's two, two more year chances of working with us. It's not too late. I think that's important to'cause people get oh upset. Like, oh wait. I missed the boat here, but no, this is a real opportunity to improve the sustainability of packaging for food, which is, in my opinion, probably the most difficult thing to package, sustainably. Yeah. Yeah, it's one, one thing I learned about just working on this recently is, you think about produce and it's still living. Like, when you put greens into, a package, a tub or something, it's still living, it's still transpiring. There's still, it's still. Working in there. And they all have different transpiration rates. So one of the packaging innovations that I really love that, Taylor Farms brand Earthbound Has this fiber tray with the, plastic over the top that they've, just started coming out with, And 2024 was the first year that they came to market with that. But every single type of leafy green has to be tested differently because the transpiration rate and how it reacts within the container is different in with every crop. And so they, it took 'em five years. To come to market with the one they currently have that's out in retail now. But everything, every new product line or every new lettuce mix, leafy green mix has to be tested and have a slightly different type of package. So it's really complex. Yes, I agree. This is not easy. What you're doing is, very commendable and I want to, just really, thank you for that. I think as a consumer and as a somebody who cares about the environment, I think what you're doing is great. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Well, thanks for being on Vannie. I look forward to seeing you down in, Salinas, California, August 20th for your event, and, we'll see you then. Okay. Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity.