TAMPA, FL -- After a decade of unrelenting bad news, the Florida citrus industry finally has reason to celebrate this holiday season.

Since 2006, Florida has been unable to ship to other citrus-producing states and U.S. territories due to a virulent, once-fearsome canker that infected groves and resulted in slowly withering trees and blemished fruit.

Blue Book Services Inc. has entered into a collaboration agreement with Fresno, CA-based Lotpath, a firm that enables food suppliers to share information about their products and production practices with consumers, retailers, trading partners and regulatory agencies, making Lotpath a registered developer with Blue Book Services.

John G. (Sonny) Heeren, president of Heeren Bros. Produce in Grand Rapids, MI, died Nov. 23 in hospice care at Spectrum Health-Butterworth Hospital in Grand Rapids. Mr. Heeren, who was 80, succumbed about a month after being diagnosed with cancer, according to his son James (Jim) Heeren.

Born in Grand Rapids on July 13, 1929, Mr. Heeren grew up and attended school in Grand Rapids, graduating from high school in 1948. He attended Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, MI, where he studied history and education, with the goal of becoming a teacher.

Passion and love of the Finger Lakes region of New York served as the inspiration for husband and wife Debra and Dave Whiting to launch new careers in the restaurant and winery business in 1999 when they opened Red Newt Bistro & Cellars in Hector, NY. Throughout the past decade, the business has evolved into one of the more popular eateries and wineries in the region. Also during that time, both have become highly involved in and dedicated to locally grown initiatives and movements.

Neither began their careers in the food and wine business.

Yakima, WA-based FirstFruits Marketing of Washington recently added more manpower and expertise to its organic sales team with the hiring of Paul Newman as an organic sales specialist.

Mr. Newman brings more than 20 years of sales and marketing experience to FirstFruits Marketing and will join Matt Miles as the core of the firm's organic apple sales team. The duo will have one of the larger organic apple manifests to market, totaling more than 1.5 million cartons of product this crop year.

Potato growers in Prince Edward Island, Canada, experienced a difficult harvesting season this year. Greg Donald, general manager of the Prince Edward Island Potato Board in Charlottetown, PEI, met with Wesley J. Sheridan, PEI minister of agriculture, in late October to discuss the harvesting problems that growers were facing.

"I followed up on my meeting with the minister during the first week of November and requested disaster funding based on the then estimated 10- 15 percent potential crop loss," Mr. Donald told The Produce News in mid- November.