When Juvenal Chavez immigrated to the United States in 1984 from his native Mexico, he naturally looked for food products that were familiar to him.

"My wife and I usually had to go to three different places to get what we needed," he said. “We went to one place for the groceries, another place for the meat and a third place for produce. It became my dream and vision to open up a store that carried all the products that the Latino shopper would want.”

In keeping with the consumer trend toward value and convenience in the face of the down economy, Village Farms has now added all new value-added packaging to its full line of tomato, sweet Bell pepper and cucumber retail product offerings.

In addition, Village Farms has enhanced its packaging capabilities to service its value-added business at all its distribution centers in the United States and Canada to meet the growing demand from its customers.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's recent trade trip to China for the California Grown program highlighted the importance of the Chinese market for California products.

While visiting a market in Hangzhou, China, the governor posed with a basket of California-grown grapes showcasing the high-quality California products available to Chinese consumers.

In a 2009 survey, the majority of Chinese grocery shoppers preferred grapes from California to any other source, including Chinese-grown grapes.

Miami-based M&M Farms, also known as M&M Tropicals, will be giving away an Apple iPad at the PMA Fresh Summit in Orlando, FL, and also will be giving away M&M calculators while supplies last.

"We wanted to do something a little different this year," Manny Hevia, owner and president of M&M Farms, said in a press release.

M&M doubled the size of its booth this year at the PMA and wanted to generate some excitement with the Apple iPad and M&M calculator giveaway, Mr. Hevia added.

DELANO, CA — Castle Rock Vineyards, here, hosted an open house and ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday, Sept. 23, to mark the completion of what is said to be one of the larger solar electric generating system installations for an agricultural facility in the nation.

Nissa Pierson, owner and managing director of Ger-Nis International in Brooklyn, NY, spent the week of Sept. 20 in Peru meeting with fair trade and organic producers. She told The Produce News that it's always nice to get to the source.

"We like to take the information we gain from the growers to share with our customers, which we’ll be doing at the PMA Fresh Summit in October," said Ms. Pierson. “This includes product information, of course, but it’s also about how growing these products helps growers to survive.”