On Sept. 7, Trent Bishop, sales manager of Lone Star Citrus Growers in Mission, TX, told The Produce News that there was some rain in the south Texas forecast, and the trees needed it. Three weeks later, he could be forgiven if he said “Enough already!”

“Over the last 20 days of September, we got 15 inches of rain,” he said in mid-October. “It is a very good thing for the long term viability of the crop, but we would have liked to have been able to get in and pick some fruit a bit earlier.”

Live Oak Farms announced that Ed Beckman has joined the company as its new chief operating officer, a newly created position that will foster the strategic growth of the family-owned grower-shipper of tomatoes and peppers.

Maglio & Co. has announced the addition of Paul Schulz, the new director of sales and marketing who joined the company this month.

When J.B. Cutsinger began selling Texas citrus in northern California he was a much younger man and the Texas industry included more than a dozen packer-shippers.

A lot has changed in those close to 40 years. But Cutsinger still sells Texas citrus in much of the Golden State and considers his firm — International Citrus and Produce in , Burlingame, CA — the “go-to” citrus supplier for the area, at least for Texas citrus. “Yeah, I think after all these years people look at us as their Texas citrus supplier.”

Since 1982, The Food Bank of Western Massachusetts has been striving to prevent and alleviate hunger in Berkshire, Franklin, Hampden and Hampshire counties, the largest food bank service area in Massachusetts.

In that region, approximately one in every eight people suffers from chronic food shortages or needs emergency food assistance. The Food Bank works to feed more than 200,000 people, a number that has more than doubled since 2010. It distributes across a large area ranging from very rural to very urban, which alone proves logistically challenging.

ANAHEIM, CA — Itaueira Farms, which markets premium extra-sweet melons from Brazil under the "REI" brand, introduced a new sliced melon pack at the Produce Marketing Association Fresh Summit Convention & Expo, here.