In a few short days, the Wisconsin Potato & Vegetable Growers Association will announce the winners of its Breakfast of Champions Wisconsin Potato Recipe Contest.

Pecans can be finicky by nature, often following a banner year with a poor one as trees collect, restore and reserve resources depleted by a bumper crop. The 2011-12 season was one of the best in Georgia history, so growers were surprised that 2012-2013 has yielded nearly the same result.

GreenGate Fresh has purchased an 11-acre property in Salinas and will transform an existing 50,000-square-foot concrete tilt-up structure into a state-of-the-art processing facility slated to open April 2013.

GreenGate Fresh was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in Yuma, AZ. Its focus is on providing the foodservice industry with safe premium-quality value-added salads, slaws and tender leaf items at an excellent value.

Mission Produce Inc., based in Oxnard, CA, announced that it will increase space and double ripening capabilities at its Toronto facility, and it will purchase a new packing facility in Mexico.

The Toronto facility will expand to more than 28,000 square feet from 6,000 square feet, and ripening capabilities will double to 144 pallet spaces. Cooling storage is also increasing to more than 400 pallet spaces.

Mission expanded into Canada three years ago.

United Fresh has teamed up with the International Association for Food Protection and the Institute of Food Technologists to produce two webinars providing details about the FDA's proposed Produce Rule under the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act.

The webinars will offer insights and analysis of the draft FSMA rule from FDA, university experts, and United Fresh food-safety leaders and legal counsel.

Mike Badalament, sales associate for Ram Produce Distributors LLC, located on the Detroit Terminal Market, told The Produce News that the company’s expertise is predominantly in tomatoes.