Meet the 2023 Regional Winners of the Grower Achievement Award

Three excellent vegetable operations earned top praise for their regions in the 2023 American Vegetable Grower^SM Grower Achievement Award program.

These growers personify excellent practices all of us can learn from. Here are the 2023 Grower Achievement Award regional winners.

West Region

Matt McGuire, JV Smith Companies (Yuma, AZ)

Matt McGuire, Chief Agriculture Officer at JV Smith companies, is a widely respected figure in cool crop production. He builds innovation into the production plans for the operation in a way the team can test new technology, varieties, and growing methods at all times.

When challenges face the region, he’s proactive in finding solutions, working with all involved to find solutions. With food safety such a concern for leafy vegetables, McGuire supports science-based research to find long-term solutions that protect consumers and builds trust with growers.

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Central Region

Will Steele, Frontera Produce (Edinburg, TX)

A fellow vegetable grower says if anyone has helped transform the industry for South Texas vegetable growers, it’s CEO Will Steele. He built a supply chain to Mexico, Central America, and South America so that Texas growers can export their produce and widen their customer base.

Frontera Produce has been at the forefront of technology improvements by utilizing soil moister sensors, its selection of new hybrid varieties, and its harvest methods to not only increase yields and drive costs out of the equation but to also attain long term sustainability goals.

Will Steele has been a steadfast advocate for South Texas agriculture for more than two decades. He has served on international, national, and local boards, heeding the call to fight for issues that matter to Texas specialty crop producers.

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East Region

John Shuman, Shuman Farms (Reidsville, GA)

Ask any area grower, and you’ll learn President and CEO John Shuman believes in promoting Vidalia onions in a way that benefits all growers. There are not a lot of vegetable brands consumers know, but Vidalia sweet onions is an exception, especially in the South. So Shuman goes directly to consumers, telling them how tasty the onions grown exclusively in the Vidalia, GA, area are.

He is a past Chairman and currently sits on the Board of Governors of the Southeast Produce Council. In the past, he has served on the Vidalia Onion Committee and Georgia Port Authority boards. After he graduated from Georgia Southern University in 1991, he restarted his family business from the ground up, creating on of the Vidalia industry’s most respected operations.

In 2002, Shuman founded the Healthy Family Project, a cause-marketing organization that encourages the produce industry to give back to local communities. To date, it’s raised more than $7.5 million and provide more than 18 million meals to Feeding America.