Kathy Fry, marketing director for the Walla Walla Sweet Onion Marketing Committee, said that this year's Walla Walla Sweet Onion Festival July 14-16 is going to be a chart-topper. For the first time in its 22-year history, the event has been expanded to more than two days, and admission and parking are free to all attendees.

Pro*Act, a leading fresh produce supplier to the foodservice industry based in Monterey, CA, announced that Bamford Produce in Toronto has joined the company's distribution network.

MOFFAT, CO -- Armed with just under a ton of baked potatoes and gallons of toppings, a small army of 30 volunteers from the Colorado Potato Administrative Committee greeted and, for the fourth consecutive year, carbo-loaded some 2,400 participants in the famed Ride the Rockies bicycle tour.

A proposed rule change offered June 27 by the Agriculture Marketing Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture seeks to allow UglyRipe tomatoes to be shipped outside Florida.

The rule change is subject to a 60-day comment period, which began June 29.

SALINAS, CA -- J. Marchini & Son has long had radicchio growing in fields in Salinas and nearby Watsonville and Hollister. To complement that effort, the Le Grand, CA-based company, located 30 miles east of Fresno, opened a sales office in Salinas June 19.

Sales Manager Jenny Nelson is the lone representative in the new Salinas office. "The move has been planned for some time," Ms. Nelson said. "It's been time to spread our wings."

Ms. Nelson has been with the company for more than six years and has been sales manager for two years.

Dumping issues among the United States, Canada and Mexico are nothing new, but a pending renewal of a dispute would be the third such major legal entanglement in a decade.