It won't be a record crop, but the 2010 California kiwifruit harvest is expected to yield a packout that is up significantly from last year and on the high side of average.

According to Nick Matteis, the assistant manager of the California Kiwifruit Commission, the commission’s executive committee met Sept. 29, just as the new harvest was getting underway, and approved an estimate of 7.5 million to 8 million tray-equivalents for the 2010 crop. That is a jump from the official 6.5 million-tray estimate made earlier this summer.

In late July, Save-A-Lot and its parent company Supervalu made a move to strengthen its position in south Texas, partnering with Rafael Ortega, owner of Texas-based El Ahorro Supermarkets and La Michoacana Meat Markets, to form a new company, Adventure Supermarkets LLC. The company will own and operate six former Save-A-Lot stores in the Houston and south Texas markets under a co-branded format, El Ahorro Save-A-Lot, with a focus on Hispanic consumers.

When Juvenal Chavez immigrated to the United States in 1984 from his native Mexico, he naturally looked for food products that were familiar to him.

"My wife and I usually had to go to three different places to get what we needed," he said. “We went to one place for the groceries, another place for the meat and a third place for produce. It became my dream and vision to open up a store that carried all the products that the Latino shopper would want.”

In keeping with the consumer trend toward value and convenience in the face of the down economy, Village Farms has now added all new value-added packaging to its full line of tomato, sweet Bell pepper and cucumber retail product offerings.

In addition, Village Farms has enhanced its packaging capabilities to service its value-added business at all its distribution centers in the United States and Canada to meet the growing demand from its customers.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's recent trade trip to China for the California Grown program highlighted the importance of the Chinese market for California products.

While visiting a market in Hangzhou, China, the governor posed with a basket of California-grown grapes showcasing the high-quality California products available to Chinese consumers.

In a 2009 survey, the majority of Chinese grocery shoppers preferred grapes from California to any other source, including Chinese-grown grapes.

Miami-based M&M Farms, also known as M&M Tropicals, will be giving away an Apple iPad at the PMA Fresh Summit in Orlando, FL, and also will be giving away M&M calculators while supplies last.

"We wanted to do something a little different this year," Manny Hevia, owner and president of M&M Farms, said in a press release.

M&M doubled the size of its booth this year at the PMA and wanted to generate some excitement with the Apple iPad and M&M calculator giveaway, Mr. Hevia added.