Steve Brazeel

CEO

In 2000, Steve Brazeel founded SunTerra Produce, which has grown from a one-person produce brokerage firm into an industry-leading, full-service platform handling sales, marketing, farming, food safety, harvesting, storage and distribution activities for specialty crop producers on over 5,000 acres throughout the US and Mexico. Elevated Foods was formed in 2020 to bring more profit to farmers by incentivizing the adoption of new technologies and practices and providing technical support to help make them more efficient and resilient. Elevated has received $32M in USDA funding under the Partnerships for Climate Smart Commodities and Regional Conservation Partnership programs. Born out of SunTerra‘s participation in the USDA’s ground-breaking Farmers to Families Food Box program, Project FoodBox was launched in 2020. Project FoodBox provides healthy fresh fruits and vegetables to food banks and healthcare organizations through innovative food-is-medicine programs. Since the program’s inception, the Project FoodBox teams have delivered over 100,000,000 lbs. of farm-fresh fruits and vegetables to communities throughout the US. Additionally, Mr. Brazeel founded and continues to hold leadership positions at several companies including: Prime Cooling – A refrigerated produce distribution center in Southern California; and SunTerra Distribution – A fresh fruit and vegetable wholesale distributor located in Dallas, TX. Mr. Brazeel previously served as member of the board of directors of the California Leafy Green Products Handler Marketing Agreement (LGMA), whose goal is to create policies and procedures to assure safe leafy greens and confidence in fresh fruit and vegetable food safety programs. Mr. Brazeel is an active member of the California Coast Chapter of Young President’s Organization (YPO).

Steve was elected to the Board in 2024.