Monterey Mushrooms employees celebrated 40 years of service in the mushroom industry Sept. 16 with special monogrammed shirts and anniversary cakes.

Monterey took its first steps toward becoming a leading mushroom distributor in 1971, when it was a single-farm operation near Watsonville, CA. Four decades later, the corporate office in Watsonville oversees a family of operations from coast to coast and border to border, servicing customers nationwide with freshly grown, processed and packaged mushrooms.

Village Farms has begun operations in the Caribbean region with a first-of-its-kind packing and distribution facility in the Dominican Republic, the company announced in an Oct. 4 press release.

Danaco Solutions has partnered with Chipotle and the Produce Marketing Association to offer special food-safety training for small growers.

Danaco Solutions LLC is headquartered in Highland Park, IL, and is a produce supply chain procurement and management firm that specializes in end-to-end risk management for the foodservice industry. The company has more than 20 years of experience in all facets of the produce industry.

With domestic kiwifruit production out of California and imported product from New Zealand, Chile and Italy, Giumarra of Wenatchee, with offices in Wenatchee, WA, is in the kiwifruit business 12 months out of the year, according to Jason Bushong, a salesman with the company.

In its domestic kiwifruit program, “everything is grown and shipped out of Hanford, CA,” he said. “We work with John Fagundes down there at Cal Harvest. It is his [fruit], and we are helping him market it.” The Cal Harvest acreage is similar this year to what it was in 2010.

MADERA, CA — Sept. 27 was the first day for packing new-crop California-grown kiwifruit for Stellar Distributing Inc., here, from nearby company vineyards, and The Produce News was on hand to witness some of the first field bins of freshly harvested fruit emptied onto the packingline.

In its California kiwifruit program, Western Fresh Marketing in Madera, CA, works with about 20 different growers with kiwifruit vineyards spread out over a wide geographic area. “We have ranches that range from Bakersfield [CA],” at the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley, “all the way to the Oregon border,” said Chris Kragie, deciduous fruit manager.