STOCKTON, CA -- Onions Etc. Inc., based here, is expanding sales of its butter baby potatoes with the Albertson's supermarket chain to include servicing Albertson's supermarket stores in the San Francisco Bay area.

Onions Etc. already services about 200 Albertson's stores in the Los Angeles area.

"We've been doing well in Los Angeles," said Derrell Kelso Jr., co-founder, president and salesman for Onions Etc. "We're always looking for something new & to grow people's sales."

Onions Etc. also sells its potatoes in some Cub Foods stores in Minnesota.

Salt Lake City, UT-based Dan's Foods, a member of Associated Food Stores' independent retailer-owned warehouse services based in Salt Lake City, will not just be making a "Cameo" appearance in the Guinness Book of World Records.

It is also helping the Muscular Dystrophy Association with $5,000 which it and Oneonta-Starr Ranch Growers of Wenatchee, WA, raised as part of a recent World's Largest Cameo Apple Display.

Senior Vice President James Mills announced that he will leave family-owned, Salinas-based grower-shipper Mills Family Farms, effective Jan. 1.

With his 50th birthday approaching, Mr. Mills has decided to pursue some personal goals and dreams. He declined to comment on the specifics of those plans other than to say that he and his wife would take a long motor coach trip to Alaska in the near future. He will continue to serve as a consultant to the company.

Within the next few months, the Vancouver, BC-based Oppenheimer Group will gain additional greenhouse pepper distribution as the result of increased volume from Divemex.

Divemex, the produce marketer's Mexican pepper grower, has more than doubled the size of its Etzatlan facility, planting over 36 new acres under glass since early 2005. Divemex Chief Executive Officer Luis de Saracho said that he anticipates this winter's yield to surpass the 2004-05 crop by roughly 60 percent.

REEDLEY, CA -- It was in the spring of 1955, half a century ago this year, that Jim Ito and his wife, Yukiko Ito, started a small tree fruit packing operation here with fruit from their own 14-acre ranch as well as some of their neighbors.

It began with a hand-packing operation off "a little belt," Yukiko Ito told The Produce News in a recent interview. They were what was known at the time as "shade tree packers," she said, and the workers visually graded and sized the fruit as they picked it off the belt.

WASHINGTON -- After three years of negotiations, Mexican and U.S. officials inked an agreement that spells out new safety rules for Mexican cantaloupe growers who want to ship product to the United States.

"We're pleased that our years of effort to pressure the two governments to come together have finally paid off," said Lee Frankel, president of the Fresh Produce Association of the Americas, who added that the agreement was hammered out three years ago, but recent political changes in both countries made it easier for technical staff to finish it.