Jason Bell, account manager for Sydney, FL-based Tater Man Inc., told The Produce News that the company is gearing up for the start of its 2012 sweet potato program with a new package size.

Cheriton, VA-based Northampton Growers is a leading producer of a wide-variety of field vegetables, including peppers, squashes, beans, cabbages, greens such as kale, mustard and collards, cucumbers, eggplant, corn, hard squashes and onions. The company was founded in 1959 and has since then, grown from a two-person operation to a full-time in-house staff of thirty employees.

The company follows the seasons northward from Florida each year, and then marks its path back southward in the fall.

Stellar Distributing Inc. in Madera, CA, picked its first fresh California figs of the 2012 season in the Niland area in California’s southern desert May 11 and will have figs of one or more varieties available continuously throughout December and, weather permitting, into the first week of January, according to Sales Manager Kurt Cappelluti.

“We finished planting last fall an additional 40 acres of organic fruit in the desert,” said George Kragie, president of Western Fresh Marketing in Madera, CA, in an interview with The Produce News May 4.

Normally when figs are packed in an eight ounce or a one-pound clamshell, they are “packed on top of each other like strawberries,” according to Marc Marchini, sales and marketing manager for figs at J. Marchini Farms.

On the very day that the Philadelphia Wholesale Produce Market opened its doors — June 5, 2011 — Jimmy Storey, owner of Quaker City Produce, returned to work following a serious illness that kept him hospitalized for about six months.