The successful teaming of a New Jersey eggplant processor with a New Jersey eggplant farmer took an unexpected route through Chicago.

Last May at the annual FMI show in Chicago, New Jersey businessman Tom Hoversen approached Al Murray, director of the division of markets for the New Jersey Department of Agriculture, with one simple question: Where could he locate a New Jersey farmer growing eggplant to supply his COMARCO Products Inc. of Camden with some of the 6.5 million pounds of eggplant it processes in a year?

PHILADELPHIA  Joe Procacci hosted about 40 industry leaders at his Procacci Bros. Sales Corp./Garden State Farms facility, here, Sept. 12 to meet Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell in a fund-raising activity for the governor.

The industry guests dined in Procacci Bros.' in-house cafeteria, then gathered in the companys spacious foyer to meet with the governor, who was about 80 minutes late and missed lunch.

When Matt Romsa began working April 1 for Gourmet Trading Co., a fresh produce importer and distributor in Los Angeles, it was a big change from the life he had been leading just a year earlier.

Mr. Romsa, 27, served for two years as a volunteer health educator for the Peace Corps in the landlocked African nation of Malawi, which ranks among the world's least developed countries, according to the U.S. government.

The 2005-06 date harvest in California's Coachella Valley is expected to be in the range of 22 million to 24 million pounds, according to Lorrie Cooper, manager of the California Date Administrative Committee, which represents about 80 percent of the dates grown.

That is about the same volume as the last two years but only about half of the record 52 million-pound harvest in 1992-93.

The U.S. International Trade Commission in Vienna, VA, voted to maintain the current antidumping order on imports of Chinese non-frozen apple juice concentrate to avoid further injury to the domestic apple industry.

In a unanimous vote, the ITC commissioners voted to prevent a return of the predatory pricing practices of the 1990s, which harmed the domestic concentrate industry. The decision is the last step in the process to extend the current antidumping order for five years. The U.S. Apple Association submitted substantive comments in support of the extension.

As rescue efforts in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama continued, and thousands of evacuees from Hurricane Katrina's enormous devastation were being relocated, a semi load of Idaho potatoes was on its way to help feed those sheltered at the Houston Astrodome.

According to Corey Griswold of 20/20 Produce Sales Inc. in Paul, ID, the load of 84,000 potatoes was donated by Idaho shippers Arrowhead Potato and Mart Produce, both located in Rupert, Magic Valley Produce in Paul and Sun River of Idaho in Aberdeen.