CHICAGO -- At the U.S. Apple Association Outlook 2009 Apple Crop Outlook & Marketing Conference, held here Aug. 20-21 at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, a consensus of the apple producers and handlers present was that the U.S. Department of Agriculture total U.S. apple crop estimate of 240,786,000 42- pound units, which includes fruit for both the fresh market and for processing, was a little high.

"The deal is going pretty well," Chuck Olsen, president of The Chuck Olsen Co. in Visalia, CA, said Aug. 18. Industry shipments to date for fresh grapes out of California's San Joaquin Valley were running around 2.6 million boxes ahead of last year, he noted.

"We have, overall, a much higher quality of grape this year -- not just us, but everybody does," he said. "Fruit is moving a little better, and prices are a little better."

The grapes have better size and color as well as better eating quality than last year, he said.

PHILADELPHIA -- New Jersey Secretary of Agriculture Douglas Fisher continued a longstanding tradition for those in his post when he toured the Philadelphia Regional Produce Market Aug. 13, accompanied by other Garden State agricultural dignitaries.

Among those in his party were Al Murray, assistant secretary of agriculture of New Jersey, and the top leaders of the New Jersey Farm Bureau, including President Richard Nieuwenhuis and Executive Director Peter Furey.

Aldi, a small-format discount grocer, is on track to open its first Texas stores next spring and has actually bumped the number of initial store openings to 30 from the originally planned 25.

Chicago's produce business "could be better for all of us, based on the economy and some on trends in Chicago," in the view of David Watson, president and chief operating officer of Chicago's Strube Celery & Vegetable Co.

The trends in Chicago started "with the consolidation at the Supervalu and Albertson's level. That created opportunities for independents to get bigger," Mr. Watson said. With this, independents took over what had previously been Cub stores. Now, "the independents are starting to buy more value and more direct."

High fuel prices and a severe transportation shortage caused some coast-to- coast truck rates to top $10,000 a year ago. That has not been the case this year; in fact, rates haven't come close.