The group of family farmers that make up the Bard Valley Medjool Date Growers Association announced a healthy-living marketing campaign for its “Natural Delights Medjool Dates” brand to encourage new fitness and wellness-related usage, and to highlight the culinary possibilities of the fruit.

As part of its ongoing goal to make bananas an even bigger part of America's everyday routine and to help support the launch of Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted, which features a banana-and-monkey-powered airplane, DOLE is joining forces with the studio on a number of marketing initiatives, including the placement of 100 million special movie-branded stickers on "DOLE" bananas sold throughout the country in June.

Ready Pac Foods Inc. is pioneering implementation of Safe Quality Food certification in all the company's facilities and announced that the Florence, NJ, facility has achieved SQF Level 3 certification, the highest level possible. Ready Pac is now one of very few fresh-cut facilities to have achieved this level of certification in the United States.

It's a tricky business being in the tomato game during the summer months. A proliferation of homegrown product, small local farmers specializing in farmers markets and regional deals sticking to a geographic marketing area can flood the market and cause heartburn for the commercial tomato producer.

Joe Bernardi, president of Bernardi & Associates Inc., Nogales, AZ, said it really irks him when his neighbor four doors down in his Arizona community, brings him home-grown tomatoes. "August is the month everyone has more tomatoes than friends," he quipped.

With the recent passing of Louis Kertesz Sr., I dedicate this article to him as a former company colleague and friend.

Louis Kertesz Sr. was the vice president of produce operations at The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company Inc. in Montvale, NJ, during the 1980s. He was a first-class expert who changed the produce format into a giant aggressive selling machine. Not only did it change at A&P, but it also permeated throughout the industry.

Salinas, CA-based Mann Packing Co. has been famously known for its broccoli for more than a generation in the produce industry.

In fact, it was more than two decades ago that it chided then President George Bush for his public diss of the item by sending him a truckload of broccoli.

Today, Mann still considers broccoli its signature item, but the firm has expanded in many other directions, most notably down various value-added paths.