The Canadian Produce Marketing Association and the Canadian Horticultural Council have a joint call to action for their members: strengthen the voice of the produce industry by engaging with Members of Parliament. To that end, June 24-28 has been designated Advocacy Week.

Alpine Fresh Inc., a grower-packer-shipper of blueberries headquartered in Miami, held a ribbon-cutting ceremony March 28 to celebrate the opening of a new blueberry packingshed with Five Star Family Growers, based in Auburndale, FL.

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In an effort to distinguish itself in the premium apple category, Rainier Fruit Co. based in Yakima, WA, has focused its attention on the science needed to deliver a consistently high quality product to the marketplace.

"The Zirkle family applied their decades of apple-growing knowledge to Honeycrisp upon its public release in 2000," said Suzanne Wolter, director of marketing for Rainier Fruit. "Honeycrisp are widely regarded as the most difficult apple to grow, store and pack."

FoodLink, the commerce and traceability platform that connects fresh food retailers and wholesalers to a network of over 2,000 growers, packers and shippers, announced that fresh fruit producer and marketer Sun World International LLC will use the company's item-level traceability solution on seedless grapes and sweet peppers, with planned expansion to all other fruits and vegetables produced and sold in the United States.

The “Gerrald’s Vidalia Sweets” label has had a sterling reputation in the industry for four decades. Utah Onions, Inc. of Syracuse, UT, has been equally well-known in the Western trade for just as long. Now those two well-known names have partnered to bring Vidalias and a variety of other Georgia-grown onions to market for the 2013 season.