Sprouts Farmers Market will launch FoodStorm, Instacart’s order management system, across all of the retailer’s 400-plus locations. The new partnership will help streamline Sprouts’ existing catering operations and modernize its holiday inventory management, ensuring a seamless holiday season experience for its customers and store team members.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and the California Department of Food and Agriculture recently established an Oriental Fruit Fly quarantine in California's San Bernardino and Riverside counties. The quarantine area includes avocado production regions and listed Hass avocados as a host, which was inconsistent with USDA’s Mediterranean Fruit Fly and Mexican Fruit Fly host lists that do not include Hass avocados.

The Fresh Produce Association of the Americas was pleased with the success of its inaugural expo, a recent enhancement to the FPAA Convention, which just concluded its 54th consecutive year. Now known as the Southwest International Produce Expo, or SWIPE, the event, held at Loews Ventana Canyon Resort last week, attracted more than 500 attendees, buyers and exhibitors to Tucson, AZ.

Did you ever hear of a cloudberry? It’s among the rarest berries in the world. I learned all about this unusual berry from a friend in Norway. This rare golden-colored berry only grows in the high cloud altitudes of the Northern Hemisphere close to the Arctic Circle. Thus, it was named “cloudberry.”

As the year-long celebration of its 75th anniversary comes to a close, Lipman Family Farms challenged its employees to an initiative of donating 75,000 meals for the milestone. In just five weeks, the company far exceeded its goal, donating an impressive 260,455 meals, more than tripling the initial objective.

At the Idaho Potato Commission’s October meeting, Mike Telford, a grower from Paul, was sworn in to serve a three-year term, and Paul Saito and Mark Darrington will now serve as the chairman and vice chairman, respectively.