A 10-day comment period closed Feb. 11 on a tentative proposal from the U.S. Department of Commerce for a new tomato suspension agreement with Mexico that is scheduled to take effect March 4, right at the peak of the season.

The proposed new agreement would mandate that all exporters be signatories, whereas the requirement under the current agreement, that has been in place since 1996, was just 85 percent. It would also significantly increase the minimum reference price for all tomato products from Mexico, in some cases nearly three times as high as under the current agreement.

Grower Alliance LLC in Nogales, AZ, which markets a wide assortment of produce commodities from Mexico, has an expanded watermelon program for the 2012-13 season. That expansion is in two areas: the addition of a winter watermelon deal out of the state of Nayarit to supplement the spring and fall programs in Sonora and an increase in mini-seedless watermelon production for the spring and fall.

A little more than a year ago, Sambrailo Packaging in Watsonville, CA, opened two new warehouses, one in Oxnard, CA, and one in Santa Maria, CA, to accommodate the company’s growing business in those areas. The expansion proved fruitful, allowing Sambrailo not only to better service customers in Southern California and the Central Coast, and also northern Baja California, Mexico, but also enabling the company “to expand our customer base” in those areas, according to Jim Scattini, vice president of sales and marketing.

With China experiencing one of its colder winters in four decades, ginger production there has been hampered and exports have been severely curtailed, causing prices to jump dramatically.

"The price of ginger is already doubling as of now," Jim Provost, owner of I Love Produce, told The Produce News Feb. 5.

The National Weather Service issued freeze warnings for parts of California's San Joaquin Valley, including a number of citrus- and tree fruit-growing areas, for the nights of Feb. 9 and Feb. 10, but temperatures did not get as cold as expected, and citrus growers were able to avert damage by turning on sprinklers and wind machines.

"I called and talked to guys this morning, and it didn't get as cold as they thought it was going to," said Bob Blakely, director of industry relations for California Citrus Mutual in Exeter, CA.

Rivermaid Trading Co., a Lodi, CA-based grower-shipper of pears, cherries, plums, peaches, nectarines, apples, table grapes and kiwifruit, has added to its sales and marketing staff to accommodate its growth.

The company announced Feb. 6 that Dave Parker, formerly the marketing director at Scattaglia Growers & Shippers, has joined Rivermaid. On Feb. 12, the firm announced that it hired Brad Gostanian, a veteran of 21 years and most recently at Wawona Fruit Co., and Mike Isola, who has 20 years of industry experience and who most recently worked at Grower Direct.