"California's biggest industry is still agriculture, and the beating that it has taken by burdensome regulations, high taxes, and water and electricity shortages has been staggering," Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) told The Produce News during an exclusive interview Feb. 25.

California's water crisis is "very real" and it poses "an imminent threat to Central Valley farming," he said, alluding to cutbacks in state and federal water allocations that will take hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland out of production this year.

The checkered flag is down and Rob Jackson, produce manager for Albertson's in Flagstaff, AZ, has been declared the winner of Sage Fruit Co.'s Sonya apple display contest.

Sage Fruit President Chuck Sinks said that the contest was announced at last year's Fresh Summit. "The display contest was to show the apple and promote Kasey Kahne and his likeness," he told The Produce News. "[Mr. Jackson] did a great job in building the display."

From adversity comes opportunity, and such was the case with the fire that leveled the Rio Queen Inc. facilities in Mission, TX, last summer.

"We've rebuilt on the same spot, but we're bigger and better," said Gretchen Kreidler, who handles marketing and public relations for the longtime Rio Grande Valley grower and shipper. "We have built a facility is more energy efficient. For example, we have eliminated 60 different motors."

The Southeast Produce Council has planned a full program of business and social events for its sixth annual conference and trade show, scheduled for March 5-7 in Tampa, FL.

The council expects attendance to approach 1,000 for this year's event, which would match last year's event in Orlando, FL, according to SPC Executive Director Terry Vorhees. "We'll have somewhere between 900 and 1,000. That's where the numbers fell last year," Mr. Vorhees told The Produce News March 3.

CHARLESTON, SC -- Looking for new avenues to promote watermelons, the National Watermelon Promotion Board is coming to the crossroads of the world, New York City's Times Square.

GLENNVILLE, GA -- Raymond D. Bland, a founder of Bland Farms and one of the early sweet onion farmers in this famed onion production region, died Feb. 19. He was 81.

"He had been disabled for about four years - bedridden," said Delbert Bland, his only son with whom he founded Bland Farms LLC in 1982. Born in 1927, Raymond Bland grew up and remained in the Vidalia onion- producing area of south Georgia all his life. "People around here don't migrate around too much," said Michael Hively, chief financial officer and general manager of Bland Farms.