With 408 stores in operation, Whole Foods plans to cross the 500-store mark by 2017, and Walter Robb, co-chief executive officer, expressed confidence in the chain tripling its store base over the long term. This news comes on the heels of a strong first quarter, with sales up to $4.7 billion, more than a 10 percent increase.

NOGALES, AZ — Lance Jungmeyer speaks without hesitation when asked about his highest professional priority.

“Social responsibility,” said Jungmeyer, the president of the Fresh Produce Association of the Americas. “We want to help our members understand how to communicate the things they are already doing” to benefit their farm workers in a socially-responsible manner.

Jungmeyer noted that December’s Los Angeles Times four-piece exposé “added pressure to show what you’re doing for your employees.”

NOGALES, AZ — A four-part Los Angeles Times exposé in December ripped Mexican produce growers and their distributors in Nogales.

The report included photos and video of very bad field worker living conditions. The fact that the reporter did not include the countless socially responsible growers and distributor-partners raised the question of the reporter’s motives.

Nogales distributors by and large felt burned by the LA Times.

HERMOSILLO, SONORA — With the leadership of Mexico’s table grape industry believing in the need for growers to be connected with the world’s most advanced technicians, the industry has presented national growers with a technical production seminar.

For the second time, starting in 2013, Asociación Agricola Local de Productores Uva de Mesa Frutas y Hortalizas, based here, presented the Feb. 5-6 conference at a modern, Tuscany-style convention center in Hermosillo.

HERMOSILLO, SONORA — Alan Aguirre, director general of Grupo Alta, headquartered here, is very highly respected in Mexico and the Nogales produce circle. Aguirre acknowledged that he is best known as a strict perfectionist.

A Feb. 4 tour of two of his many Mexican horticultural ranches showed what can be accomplished with such perfectionism.

NOGALES, AZ — The Mexican tomato industry is into its second full shipping season of working under the United States’ price floor for Mexican tomatoes.

Voicing concern against this agreement is one of the largest shippers of Mexican tomatoes, Alejandro Canelos, director of Apache Produce Imports LLC, which ships the “Plain Jane” brand.