ASTA Conference (American Spice Trade Association)

We are currently on our way to

Tucson

, for the ASTA (American Spice Trade Association) annual meeting and trade show. We are very excited to attend this conference, as it gives us the opportunity to meet some of the world’s top suppliers of spices. There are many educational seminars and current crop reports. Hopefully there is some good and spicy food!  While the world of spices has a history as long as the history of the world, innovations in crop growing and harvesting are always taking place, and we need to be knowledgeable about this.

Global economy always affects the spice trade, as spices are still a commodity, and we want to keep current on this. We are also interested in the organic trend, up until now we have not found organic spices to match up with our goal of selling only the highest quality of spices. We hope this is changing. If we were ever going to find vendors along this route, it would be here. There is also a seminar on Tuesday morning (8 am, yuck) about our voice and input being needed in the new government’s food related issues, we have to have a presence in mapping out the direction in which we will proceed. We also, like everyone else, need to be cognizant and conscious of being as green as we can. We hope to come back charged more educated, and with some new ideas of how we can add an organic line of high quality to our inventory.