GREELEY, CO -- Attendees at the Colorado Onion Association annual meeting, here, Jan. 25, were provided with a snapshot of the condition of the industry on the state, national and international levels, and had an opportunity to learn more about significant changes to the employment verification process in Colorado.

"The onion industry is enjoying prices that aren't the norm," National Onion Association Executive Vice President Wayne Mininger told the audience. "It may be another 36 years before this happens again."

The produce industry's United Fresh Marketplace and the Food Marketing Institute's supermarket show will go it alone in Las Vegas in 2008, as the Fancy Food Show and All Things Organic announced they will be staying in Chicago.

WASHINGTON -- Specialty crop producers hailed the Bush administration's new farm bill proposal, saying it would significantly expand nutrition and key market promotion programs and call for new spending of $5 billion over 10 years to help growers.

RonProCon, a produce industry consulting firm founded by Ron Pelger, has enlisted the services of three industry professionals to better serve its clients.

Founded in 1998 by Mr. Pelger, who has more than 30 years of experience as a retail produce executive, the firm specializes in helping companies maximize sales and efficiency by keeping abreast of the latest trends in the industry.

The produce industry lost "a kind, Southern gentleman" in Warren S. Wheeler, chief executive officer of the company that bore his name and that he founded in 1962 on the Tampa Wholesale Produce Market, who recently died from congestive heart failure. He was 88 years old.

HANFORD, CA -- Warmerdam Packing LLC, here, has developed an innovative way to heat its stone fruit ripening rooms and reduce the cost of operating the rooms in the process. It uses waste heat generated by the existing refrigeration systems used for cooling in the company's cold-storage facility.

"Our whole industry here in the Central [San Joaquin] Valley has been doing different forms of preconditioning or ripening of stone fruit," said Mr. Hovsepian.