For the first time in history, domestic blueberry producers will be moving product to South Korea. All eyes are focused on Oregon, the first and only state in the United States to have executed such a fresh market agreement.

Most Georgia growers do not provide housing for laborer families, do require previous experience before hiring, pay employees weekly and do not use labor contractors to find workers. Those are among the results of a recent study conducted by the Georgia Department of Labor in the wake of a spring 2011 labor shortage that left crops rotting in the fields and cost the state a half-billion dollars in direct and indirect losses.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate voted 64-35 to approve the 2012 farm bill, a victory for specialty crop producers who held onto gains from the 2008 farm bill in research, nutrition and market promotion funding.

The Senate waded only through eight amendments June 21 before casting the final votes on passage in early afternoon.

"I hope my friends in the House see what we've done," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said on the Senate floor before the final vote.

Sharon Lynn Coffman Brannan, the former manager of the Maryland Food Center Authority in Jessup, MD, who is credited with guiding the market through changes brought on by the 9/11 terrorist attacks, died June 12. She was 62.

Kingston & Associates Marketing LLC announced June 20 that it would begin marketing Hass avocadoes from Peru for the 2012 season through its strategic grower-partnerships.

The first shipments of this program were scheduled to arrive in late June and continue through the end of August. As a complement to its growing pineapple and mango programs, the Idaho Falls, ID-based firm sees the move as another customer-driven expansion of its tropical import business.

Pandol Bros. Inc. in Delano, CA, expects to begin harvesting its first grapes from the San Joaquin Valley out of the Arvin district early the week of July 2, according to Louis Pandol, an officer in the company. That is considerably earlier than last year, when “we started on the 15th.”

Although earlier, in fact, than the last two years, this year’s start date, “the way I would characterize it, is more like a normal start,” he said.