PESQUEIRA, MEXICO — The roughly 10-week harvest in the Hermosillo, Sonora, area was in full-swing in early June, when 1,000 workers at Grupo Agrícola Alta’s Pozo Manuel vineyards labored to get as many as 25 trucks a day on their way to the three-hour drive to the U.S. port of entry at Nogales, AZ. Depending on the client, Grupo Agrícula packs in bags or plastic containers known as clamshells.

Nancy Pickersgill, marketing coordinator for Mastronardi Produce Ltd., headquartered in Leamington, ON, said the company has made significant increases in its greenhouse grown organic program this year.

“We are at 100 percent growth rate so far this year,” said Ms. Pickersgill. “The demand for tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers has us in a sold-out situation at this time of year. ‘Mastronardi Produce/Sunset Organics’ line continues to offer a variety of tomatoes, peppers and regular and mini cucumbers, based on consumer demands.”

Tom Deardorff, II, president of Deardorff Family Farms in Oxnard, CA, told The Produce News that the big news of the day for the company is that it began shipping out of its new LEED facility, also in Oxnard, in mid-May.

“LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design,” Mr. Deardorff explained. “We’ll be moving into it completely. It’s only about a mile away from our current facility, which makes the transition a bit easier.”

For the first time in history, domestic blueberry producers will be moving product to South Korea. All eyes are focused on Oregon, the first and only state in the United States to have executed such a fresh market agreement.

Most Georgia growers do not provide housing for laborer families, do require previous experience before hiring, pay employees weekly and do not use labor contractors to find workers. Those are among the results of a recent study conducted by the Georgia Department of Labor in the wake of a spring 2011 labor shortage that left crops rotting in the fields and cost the state a half-billion dollars in direct and indirect losses.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate voted 64-35 to approve the 2012 farm bill, a victory for specialty crop producers who held onto gains from the 2008 farm bill in research, nutrition and market promotion funding.

The Senate waded only through eight amendments June 21 before casting the final votes on passage in early afternoon.

"I hope my friends in the House see what we've done," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said on the Senate floor before the final vote.