Based on last year's success, Westlake Produce Co.s "Always Fresh" brand strawberries from Florida will increase in volume from the 500,000 flats the company packed and sold in 2005 to 700,000 in the coming year.

The Los Angeles-based Westlake, a distributor of 14 fresh produce items, has a fully staffed sales office in Winter Haven, FL, where its strawberry and blueberry deals are managed by Brandon Mullin. Its customers are chains along the Eastern Seaboard, while the home office handles sales from west of the Mississippi.

Growers face many risks in running their businesses, but facing a man with a gun on their own property should never be one of them.

International markets are highly evident on the passport of David Webster. This chief executive officer of AgraCo Technologies International LLC in Lafayette Hill, PA, travels to distant parts of the world about once a month as he promotes a variety of agricultural technologies.

AgraCo's products include "Extend-A-Life" ethylene removal filters; "Produce Saver" sachets to extend fruit and vegetable shelf life; "Nitro Max," a microbial fertilizer; and "No Fly Zone," which is a non-toxic fly trap.

Longtime California strawberry industry member and current retiree Herbert Baum has spent the last six years penning an analysis of that industry with regard to its marketing order - and he does not give it good marks.

"Quest for the Perfect Strawberry" is in the process of being published as Mr. Baum's doctoral dissertation as well as what he calls a book that serves as "a descriptive model for marketing order evaluation." He has been working on the book "all day and into the night" for six years, but it is really 50 years in the making.

A substantial number of Salinas Valley lettuce shippers were expected to attend an informational meeting Thursday, Jan. 5 concerning the possibility of joining the Central California Lettuce Producers Cooperative.

Albertsons put itself on the block. Marsh Supermarkets has announced it is looking for a buyer after posting large third-quarter losses. The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. has once again shrunk, going from over 1,000 stores to 350. Many Food Lion and Winn Dixie stores have been offered for sale and have not reopened as supermarkets. Ahold has announced losses.