When the Idaho Potato Commission first unveiled its plans for a Big Idaho Potato Truck that would tour across the country, the industry could have scarcely imagined how successful the truck and its crew would be at garnering media attention as well as attracting crowds wherever it went.

Although Colorado’s ongoing water shortage has resulted in fewer acres of potatoes in the San Luis Valley this year, Jed Ellithorpe, farm and operations manager for Aspen Produce’s sister company, Ponderosa Partnership, said he was optimistic going into the 2013 harvest.

“Our acreage is down,” Ellithorpe said in late August, confirming what he had predicted in early 2013.

Oxnard, CA-based Gills Onions announced Sept. 12 the addition of TERI TROST to its sales team.

Trost brings over 30 years of experience in foodservice sales management, customer service and marketing, as well as key account management to Gills Onions.

Grocery store ad flyers that arrive in the newspaper every week are loaded with special items promoted at attractive prices. The front page of the ad generally represents red-hot specials with even much lower retails. Optional attractions such as coupons or buy-one-get-one-free promotions are attractions that help to entice consumer interest even more.

A new face will be stepping into the ring Sept. 24, when David Benjamin, chief executive officer of logistics innovator Locus Traxx Worldwide, based in Jupiter, FL, joins Chris Baker, senior vice president of Worldwide ISV, OEM and Java Sales for Oracle, at Oracle Open World at the Fairmount Leader's Circle in San Francisco.

After leaving a death toll of at least 97 on the central coast of western Mexico early the week of Sept. 15, Tropical Storm Manuel continued up the coast and reached hurricane strength before making landfall once more on the coast of Sinaloa, bringing extensive storm damage to growing areas around Culiacan, a major growing area for tomatoes, squash and many other produce commodities marketed in the United States during the late fall, winter and early spring seasons.