Behind The Fruit - The Fresh Produce Podcast

What happens when a job you thought would be temporary becomes a 13-year career? Rochelle Bohm never planned a career in fresh produce. Her route took her from New Zealand to Australia, environmental science in Kuwait and almost a decade in Alaska before she eventually arrived in Washington State and joined CMI Orchards. What she expected to be a temporary role became the next chapter of an already unconventional career. Today, Rochelle is Vice President of Marketing at CMI Orchards. In this ...

Miguel Jubal spent almost 20 years working across international fresh produce supply chains before co-founding Cargo Produce, a supply chain software platform built specifically for exporters and importers. In this episode of Behind the Fruit, Lucy Robinson talks to Miguel about his career across Chile, Peru and the US, and how working on both the exporter and importer sides of the industry shaped the business he eventually built. Miguel explains the problems Cargo Produce was created to solv...

David Baxter’s route to becoming CEO of Natural Delights began with an engineering degree and a facilities management job. It later took him through General Mills, food marketing and a move to the Arizona desert. In Episode 13 of Behind the Fruit, David joins Lucy Robinson to share how saying yes to work outside his formal remit helped prepare him to lead a business at 40. They discuss his first months as CEO, including the decisions he had to make when Natural Delights’ available volume chan...

Fresh produce businesses are generating huge amounts of information every day. Much of it still sits on paper forms, in spreadsheets and across systems that don’t communicate with each other. That creates a problem for companies hoping to make better use of AI. Todd Gibson joins Lucy Robinson to discuss what fresh produce businesses need in place before AI and automation can produce useful results. Todd is a strategic advisor at GoLive, where he works with food, beverage and fresh produce com...

Jenny Du never expected a postdoctoral chemistry project to lead to co-founding a company focused on reducing food waste. As employee number two at Apeel Sciences, she helped take an idea from a garage in California to a business working with citrus and avocado growers around the world. Along the way, she has moved between research, regulatory affairs, supply chain, communications and external affairs, often building new functions as the company grew. In this episode, Jenny joins Lucy Robinso...