Excellent thesis work by Carol Jiayi Dong and Phil Coles was just published in the Journal of Food Distribution Research

The article, titled Produce Buyer Quality Requirements to Form an Eastern Broccoli Industry is available open access at JFDR.

The article show that wholesale buyers expect broccoli to look familiar. Local variants with slightly different color or flower-bud size were acceptable only to natural food reseller, not at standard supermarkets. The challenge for a new region is to meet standards that were developed for other production areas.

Carol is currently pursuing her PhD in ag economics at UC Davis, Phil is  a professor of practice in business at Lehigh University.