There are some things Trent Bishop, sales manager of Lone Star Citrus Groves in Mission, TX, and one of the company’s founders, just can’t control. One of those is the disposition of his competitors.

Tommy Piazza, partner, corporate clerk and executive in charge of potatoes for Community-Suffolk Inc., located at the Boston Market Terminal in Everett, MA, announced to The Produce News that the company has successfully implemented a new computer system referred to as an information technology infrastructure.

For the past two years, the Idaho Potato Commission's national television commercial has featured the Great Big Idaho Potato Truck and a perplexed potato farmer who can't seem to keep tabs on it and its fun-loving Tater Team.

“We are really optimistic and excited about the upcoming crop because we are back to a ‘normal’ year,” following a shortened crop in 2013, said Craig Morris, a salesman at Homegrown Organic Farms in Porterville, CA.

“Last year as we came into the season we had a borderline crop failure with regard to Navels” due to a freeze on Dec. 5 and for several nights following. That created “a difficult situation,” he said.

“As it turned out, in the end of the year it wasn’t nearly as bad as we thought.” But the industry did not have enough supplies to meet customer demand.

Johnston Farms in Edison, CA, has long been in the business of growing and marketing citrus and potatoes. But lately, “the potato deal has not been too kind to anybody’s pocketbook,” Dennis Johnston, a partner in the company, said in an interview with The Produce News Oct. 17. “Demand is down and oversupply is still a big problem” even though an industry cooperative was “supposed to” facilitate a reduction in potato acreage to stabilize prices. “It hasn’t worked,” he said.

Booth Ranches LLC in Orange Cove, CA, a grower, packer and shipper of citrus from California’s San Joaquin Valley, “is unique in that we are a fully integrated company only selling the fruit we grow ourselves,” according to Tracy Jones, vice president of domestic sales. Owner Loren Booth “grows 7,500 acres of citrus stretching across California’s Central Valley,” Jones said in a written statement to The Produce News. “We own and operate two cold storages, both in Orange Cove.” The packing facilities and acreage are all certified under GlobalGAP.