The Pride of New York program and Wal-Mart stores throughout New York state are celebrating the bounty of the harvest season with a weeklong showcase of produce grown in New York. From Nov. 7 to 13, 39 Wal-Mart stores across the state will highlight and promote New York-grown produce items with Pride of New York in-store signage.

A real produce man will soon lead the community known as the Salad Bowl of the World.

By a wide margin, Dennis Donohue, president of European Vegetable Specialties Farms Inc. in Salinas, CA, has been elected mayor of that city of 150,000 people and will take office early next month.

In unofficial figures, Mr. Donohue received 73 percent of the vote Tuesday, Nov. 7, while his opponent, Maria Giuriato, a Salinas councilwoman, received 27 percent.

Sun Belle Inc. unveiled its colorful new logo and packaging at the Produce Marketing Association annual convention held recently in San Diego. New packaging on display included completely new labels and boxes for the company's berry line of raspberries, blackberries, blueberries and red currants, as well as new PLU and UPC stickers for its greenhouse-grown peppers and tomatoes.

An impressive group of retail and foodservice produce buyers have weighed in on the food-safety issue calling for specific Good Agricultural Practices to be in place for spinach by Dec. 15 and for other crops by Feb. 15, 2007.

PHILADELPHIA -- The annual preseason Chilean fruit meeting, held here Oct. 27, brought a number of revelations to the fruit import trade.

The annual meeting, which featured a workshop titled "Enhancement of Chilean Fresh Fruit Trade Operations," is presented by the Chilean & American Chamber of Commerce of Greater Philadelphia. Roughly 150 people from the industry attended the meeting, which included speakers representing a variety of federal agencies, as well as ASOEX, the Chilean Exporters Association, which is based in Santiago.

SAN DIEGO -- Chile, which typically exports about 80 percent of its annual avocado crop to the United States and expects to do so again this year, has a record crop on the trees and expects to ship a record volume of avocados to the United States during the season which started in earnest in early October.