NAPLES, FL -- As members of the Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association were getting ready to gather at the Ritz-Carlton Naples Sept. 18-21 for the 67th annual FFVA convention, the business end of farming was top-of-mind.

Labor shortages, new water regulations from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, food safety and modern marketing are ever-present concerns, and for the most part dominated the convention agenda.

WASHINGTON -- Specialty crop groups have three months to develop their wish list for the next farm bill as the House Agriculture Committee is vowing to fast-track the bill next year instead of waiting until 2012, said U.S. Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-CA), who kicked off the United Fresh Produce Association's Washington Public Policy Conference, held Sept. 14-16, here.

Terry Humfeld will join the Cranberry Institute in November and will ascend to executive director of the East Wareham, MA-based organization, effective Jan. 1, 2011, Jeff Kapell, chairman of the institute announced in a Sept. 14 press release.

Mr. Humfeld's hiring is the result of an extensive search process by the board of directors to replace the institute’s long-time executive director, Jere Downing, who will retire at the end of the year.

The 2009 Idaho potato crop may not have been the largest on record, due to acreage reductions, but it did the highest yield per acre on record, and that "resulted in a very large crop ... significantly larger than we anticipated," according to Frank Mir, president of the Idaho Potato Commission in Eagle, ID.

Other potato-producing areas in the United States also had large 2009 crops, which made moving the Idaho crop all the more challenging.

Del Monte Fresh Produce announced Sept. 14 that it has entered into an agreement with Vistar Corp., a division of Performance Food Group, to distribute its new line of fresh fruit and vegetable vending line products across the country.

You wouldn't have known it by the record high temperatures and dry conditions this summer, but New Jersey is a temperate state, weather-wise.

As such, it’s just a fact of nature’s cycle that New Jersey’s fresh produce season will come to a close in late November and gear up again in March, with the first field-grown produce usually available by May.