Alamo, TX-based Fresh Tex Produce, a year-round shipper of tropical fruits and vegetables, as well as chili peppers and tomatoes out of Mexico, recently hired Rio Grande Valley native CHRIS HOFFMAN comes to the company after working for Glaziers for the past two years, handling outside sales. Mr.

ARMANDO PALACIOS, a Rio Grande Valley native, joined Alamo, TX-based Fresh Tex Produce after working in sales for six years at Azteca Milling, a producer of milled corn under the brand known as “Maseca,” under the position of executive sales. During his time at Azteca, Mr.

“We’ve got increases in everything” for the 2012 grape season in the San Joaquin Valley and will have additional increases in coming seasons, said Nick Dulcich, a partner in J.P. Dulcich & Sons in Delano, CA, and president of Sunlight International Sales Inc., the company’s sales arm. “We are growing as a company.”

The company’s volume was up last year and continues to build this year with young vineyards coming into fuller production.

In addition, there are young vineyards yet to come into production, and new planting continues.

This year, Oregonians will have an opportunity to find out just what makes Oregon agriculture so strong. The Oregon Department of Agriculture is helping residents make the connection through its traveling exhibit, “Telling the Oregon Agriculture Story,” at selected county fairs.

Wada Farms Marketing Group of Idaho Falls, ID, is teaming up with Worley & McCullough, a fourth-generation potato grower-shipper in Colorado's San Luis Valley.

Worley & McCullough will continue to operate its packingshed under its current name; however, under the partnership arrangement Wada will conduct the sales and marketing.

A lighter-than-normal garlic crop in China, said to be due to small sizes, is expected to result in a 30 percent reduction in Chinese garlic exports to the United States this year, and that should bode well for California producers, giving them the opportunity for better returns on this year's crops.

"The word is that China is short," said Paul Auerbach, president of Maurice A. Auerbach Inc., in Secaucus, NJ. "Being that it is a world market these days, and being that this market her has developed into a very heavily Chinese marketplace ... that is a very important factor."