Monterey Mushrooms surpassed the $2 million mark in total scholarships awarded to the dependent children of Monterey employees. The scholarships have helped provide the opportunity to attain knowledge and fulfill dreams for the 20 years this program has been in place.

Organic pomegranates, organic persimmons and one variety of organic grape constitute the major fall fruit varieties offered by Homegrown Organic Farms in Porterville, CA.

“We will be starting pomegranates right around the end of August or the first of September,” said President Scott Mabs in an interview with The Produce News Aug. 6. “We start off with the Smith variety and the Foothill, then it looks like we will move into the Wonderfuls sometime around the first week of October this year.”

WASHINGTON — Importers of certain fresh produce exempted from the Food & Drug Administration's new produce-safety proposal are not off the hook from complying with the Foreign Supplier Verification Program, cautioned Brian Pendleton, senior policy adviser at the FDA, during a United Fresh Produce Association-sponsored webinar held Sept. 3.

This was just one of many wide-ranging questions Pendleton and Charlotte Christin, another FDA senior policy adviser, fielded during a 90-minute webinar on the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act rules proposed on July 26.

Coastline, a year-round grower-shipper of fresh vegetables, is proud to announce that Cisco Martinez has joined the company as its quality assurance manager. 

Dick Peixoto, owner and sole grower of Lakeside Organic Gardens, headquartered in Watsonville, CA, said, “We love what we do, and we think it shows.”

Peixoto has been farming since he was 16 years old. He says he loves what he does and he would never dream of stepping out of the field and into an office. He brought organic produce to the market for the first time in 1996, and for him it was a dream come true. He began by successfully conquering the challenge of converting more than 1,000 acres to certified organic land.

Though the firm has been selling organic carrots for more than a half dozen years, Kern Ridge Growers LLC Account Representative Chris Smotherman said “it is still a relatively new item for us and we’re still trying to get our brand known.”