Earth Source Celebrates 20 Years
Earth Source, the fresh produce importing and grower representing business of the Four Seasons Family of Companies, celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2026!
Connecting Growers to the Market
Four Seasons Produce’s founder, David Hollinger, has always been very entrepreneurial. In 1997, he bought a Watermelon supplier and began importing watermelons, tomatoes, peppers, mangoes and more from Mexico, shipping them from packing sheds and facilities in the McAllen, Donna, and Mission areas of South Texas near the border. Limes were also a big part of this business which would come to be called Four Seasons Trading.
Using Limes from Veracruz and produce from growers in other parts of Mexico, Four Seasons Trading built up a program for Walmart and some other national accounts in the late 90s and early 2000s.
The produce import business provided many learnings for Four Seasons Trading as well as many losses. It was a risky business model of advancing money ahead of seasons to growers in Mexico, securing enough product to recoup the advances, packing and selling the produce, enduring the volatilities of weather, quality and markets, all while trying to please the US buyers and then give a fair return to the growers. This proved challenging. Eventually, Four Seasons Trading closed after too many years in the red.
A Phoenix Rises from the Ashes
As Four Seasons Trading in Texas was closing there was another business model David Hollinger and the leadership team had started gaining some traction called Four Seasons Marketing. This business was essentially a produce brokerage operation that connected produce buyers with produce grower-shippers that were often already suppliers of Four Seasons Produce’s wholesale distribution business to sell volume items directly from the shipping point to larger buyers for a small fee for facilitating the transaction.
Earth Source was started in 2006 as a new business to combine the Lime importing business, which was one of the more successful parts of the closed Four Seasons Trading operation, with the emerging produce brokering activity of Four Seasons Marketing back in Ephrata, PA. The new company was initially called, Fresh Pro Trading, then was soon changed to Earth Source Trading, then more recently just Earth Source.
Under the leadership of Ken Mobley, in the early years Earth Source established itself as an import citrus expert with Lime and Lemon programs for national club stores, large retailers, and corporate chain restaurants.
Since its inception, Earth Source has represented import Lime, Lemon, Orange, Apple, Onion, Avocado, Grape and Pepper programs from countries like Mexico, Argentina, New Zealand, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Spain, Holland, and more.
Jason Hollinger, son of Four Seasons Produce’s founder David, joined Earth Source as Assistant General Manager after returning to the family business following getting his MBA in Costa Rica while learning Spanish. His influence helped shape the company trajectory.
Creating New Value and Making an Impact
The produce import business, especially with Limes, can be risky and change dramatically year to year due to supply, demand, weather and profitability factors facing growers across the world. The highs and lows of availability, quality, and pricing caused the Earth Source team to really consider where it creates the most value for growers and customers.
What has emerged from the past several years has been a focus on people, planet, and profit via attribute-driven fruits, growers, and farming methods. Fair Trade certified produce grown with pollinator-friendly methods, and often Organic Certified now dominates Earth Source’s portfolio.
Retailers and other professional buyers that care about making a difference with our environment and the people that grow, pick, and pack our food find supply partnerships with Earth Source helpful.
A great example of this is with one of Earth Source’s growers, Zamora Citrus. The Zamora family grows Lemons in the Tucumán region of Argentina where the fruit thrives. Their crop is in peak season down in the Southern Hemisphere when California Lemon growers are in their off season of lower volume. Earth Source partnered with Zamora to help them become Fair Trade certified for their field and packing house production.
Zamora’s Fair Trade and Fair Trade Organic Lemons are imported by Earth Source during the summer to distribute to a high-end national retailer and other buyers. Earth Source sells these Lemons in bulk and Green Bee brand bags, as well as private label bags. A Fair Trade “premium” (or dollar amount on top of the cost of goods) from each box sold goes back to Zamora via a fund that is invested into projects and monies that directly support farm workers and their communities under frameworks set forth by Fair Trade USA. Improvements to rural farm worker homes and schools has been made possible, along with the creation on soccer/futbol fields and facilities for the communities of the packing house employees are some examples of the fruits of this program.
What’s next? In addition to growing the Fair Trade and Organics product lines, Earth Source is now working on connecting regeneratively grown and Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC) farmers to regional and national buyers.
Earth Source empowers growers all over the world while “Helping Others Succeed in Fresh.” Thank you to all who have been a part of helping us reach the 20 year milestone!
