PHILADELPHIA -- Like wandering nomads seeking a new home, Philadelphia's produce wholesalers have endeavored to find a new market location for the last five years. Potential sites have come and gone in a series of mostly political events. The effort to move this spring was even disrupted by a bald eagle's nest on a proposed site that was reclaimed by Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell.

San Leandro, CA-based Bay Cities Produce Co. Inc. recently received organic certification from Agriculture Service Certified Organic.

Bay Cities is the largest exclusive restaurant purveyor in the San Francisco Bay area. The company also services institutions such as clubs, hospitals and cruise ships with a full line of fresh, frozen and prepared fruits and vegetables. Its coverage extends west to the coast, south to San Jose, north to Richmond and east to Livermore.

Sun World lnternational LLC in Bakersfield, CA, had recently begun a new program of marketing imported Minneola tangelos from Peru when the devastating earthquake on Peru's south coast struck, with an epicenter near the agricultural community of Pisco.

The company is responding to the disaster by donating a portion of the proceeds from Peruvian Minneolas to an earthquake fund to help the victims.

The year 1953 was quite eventful for Tanya Auerbach, a wife, mother, grandmother and produce industry executive who died earlier this month. It was the year she graduated from college, co-founded a garlic company and got married.

Tanya (nee Kaplan) Auerbach was born Jan. 28, 1932 in Brooklyn, NY, where she was raised. She and Irwin Auerbach founded Maurice A. Auerbach Inc. in Mr. Auerbach's mother's home in Brooklyn in 1953 as a distributor handling a single item: garlic. The company was named for Mr. Auerbach's father.

Whole Foods Market Inc. and Wild Oats Markets Inc. announced Aug. 23 that they are now legally cleared to proceed with their merger as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has denied the Federal Trade Commission's request for a stay to preclude the closing of the merger pending the FTC's appeal and has dissolved the Aug. 20 administrative injunction, which had prevented the transaction from going forward while the court considered the FTC's motion.

Farmers have been the backbone of America for a very long time. In fact, archaeologists determined that agriculture first took place around 7,000 B.C.

In 1790, the total U.S. population was 3,929,214 and farmers made up 90 percent of the labor force. Two hundred years later, in 1990, the population stood at 246,081,000, and farmers comprised just 2.6 percent of the work force.