Stephanie Marchini loves growing pumpkins, but she loves teaching kids about growing them even more. She is the wife of Jeff Marchini, president of J. Marchini Farms in Le Grand, CA, a leading producer of specialty Italian produce including radicchio, fennel, Tuscan cabbage, Puntarelle, Cardone and Romanesco. The company is particularly well-known for its Black Mission and Kadota figs, and its Marchini almonds.

Michael Funk of United Natural Foods Inc. and Mark Lipson of the U.S. Department of Agriculture will receive the Organic Trade Association's prestigious Organic Leadership Awards for 2011.

On Aug. 29, the day following Hurricane Irene's determined scathing path from North Carolina north along the eastern coastline, most of the Northeast agricultural industry was just beginning to assess the damage that the winds and heavy rains caused to crops and business in general.

Even after the storm had weakened to a tropical storm over New Jersey, it continued to deliver winds strong enough to blow fruit off trees and flood farmlands.

The U.S. Food & Drug Administration’s new countrywide import alert for Mexican papayas is likely to send retailers scrambling for product, devastate Mexican producers and raise troubling questions about FDA tests that found Salmonella on papayas from different regions of the country.

An outbreak that has caused at least 100 people across 23 states to become ill with Salmonella Agona started the series of events that led to a July 23 recall by McAllen, TX-based Agromod Produce Inc. of its papayas distributed nationwide and Canada.