Excerpts from the report: This report is part of a continuing research program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture designed to find more efficient and less costly methods of marketing food products from producer to consumers. The purpose of this study was to define the information requirements of fresh fruit and vegetable wholesalers, determine alternative systems to satisfy these requirements, and develop cost estimates for the selected alternatives. The companies described in this report were located in and around Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Chicago, Baltimore, and Los Angeles. The firms' gross sales ranged between $10 and $20 million. The four major phases of this study were: (1) Present System Analysis, which profiles the selected sample of wholesalers and describes their present manual office information procedures; (2) Requirements Analysis, which defines and analyzes the present information requirements; (3) Alternative Systems Analysis, which defines and analyzes possible alternatives to the present manual systems; and (4) the Cost/Benefit Analysis, which develops costs and benefits for each alternative.