The new facility being constructed by Columbia Marketing International and McDougall & Sons in Baker Flats, WA, is close to completion.

“We are now using the facility as a cross-dock location and will be working through the winter to complete the inside,” said Steve Lutz, vice president of marketing. “When completed, this will be an $8 million storage and loading facility that will allow CMI to be ready for harvests that continue to be of record-breaking size.”

The California Sweet Potato Council has teamed up with Ketchum, a leading public relations firm in San Francisco, to launch a new marketing campaign that includes a fresh new logo and website in an effort to represent the California difference.

In addition, the campaign seeks to boost consumer outreach through social media and food bloggers.

The reception of the national retail and wholesale trade to the 2013 Michigan apple crop has been “wonderful,” in the view of Christopher Sandwick, vice president of sales and marketing, for Belleharvest Sales, Inc., which is located in Belding, MI.  

Belleharvest has enjoyed steady movement this season, Sandwick recently said.

The company expected to finish shipping its Honeycrisp crop in late December “and we’re happy with the movement of all other varieties.”

As the Northeast got hit with a paralyzing snow storm just a day after the calendar turned to 2014, the first California snow survey of the year revealed what everyone already knew: the state is suffering one of its worst droughts in history -- and there is no rain in the forecast.

While researchers were in the field physically putting instruments in the snow on Jan. 3 to gauge depth and water content, electronic data had already revealed the water content statewide to be 20 percent of normal.

Whole Foods Market announced Jan. 2 that its Local Producer Loan Program has reached the initial goal of funding $10 million in low-interest loans to local and independent food businesses, and has now committed up to $25 million in funding. The Local Producer Loan Program has provided 184 loans to 155 companies since its inception in 2007.

Colorful Harvest, a Salinas, CA-based grower and marketer of heirloom style vegetables and strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries, announced several personnel changes coinciding with the start of 2014.

Doug Ranno, a founding member and chief operating officer, has left the company to pursue other opportunities, according to a Jan. 2 press release issued by Colorful Harvest.