After more than a decade of negotiations, the California tree fruit industry has gained access to markets in mainland China for plums from five California counties.

According to Blair Richardson, president of the California Tree Fruit Agreement in Reedley, CA, the Chinese market is "a huge opportunity" for California growers and could potentially surpass Canada to become the largest export market for California plums.

NEW YORK  Johnny Iuzzini, the executive pastry chef of Jean Georges, a swanky New York restaurant, thinks that grapefruit produced in the Lone Star State of Texas are the piece de resistance. By his final recipe presentation at the French Culinary Institute, here, Jan. 7, his audience of nearly 100 people agreed.

Based on last year's success, Westlake Produce Co.s "Always Fresh" brand strawberries from Florida will increase in volume from the 500,000 flats the company packed and sold in 2005 to 700,000 in the coming year.

The Los Angeles-based Westlake, a distributor of 14 fresh produce items, has a fully staffed sales office in Winter Haven, FL, where its strawberry and blueberry deals are managed by Brandon Mullin. Its customers are chains along the Eastern Seaboard, while the home office handles sales from west of the Mississippi.

Growers face many risks in running their businesses, but facing a man with a gun on their own property should never be one of them.

International markets are highly evident on the passport of David Webster. This chief executive officer of AgraCo Technologies International LLC in Lafayette Hill, PA, travels to distant parts of the world about once a month as he promotes a variety of agricultural technologies.

AgraCo's products include "Extend-A-Life" ethylene removal filters; "Produce Saver" sachets to extend fruit and vegetable shelf life; "Nitro Max," a microbial fertilizer; and "No Fly Zone," which is a non-toxic fly trap.

Longtime California strawberry industry member and current retiree Herbert Baum has spent the last six years penning an analysis of that industry with regard to its marketing order - and he does not give it good marks.

"Quest for the Perfect Strawberry" is in the process of being published as Mr. Baum's doctoral dissertation as well as what he calls a book that serves as "a descriptive model for marketing order evaluation." He has been working on the book "all day and into the night" for six years, but it is really 50 years in the making.