The California Department of Food & Agriculture's deputy secretary of legislation and policy, Rayne Pegg, has been appointed administrator of the U.S. Department of Agricultures Agricultural Marketing Service. "Rayne has served the people of California admirably through her legislative work here at CDFA, including areas such as invasive pests, organic farming and food safety," CDFA Secretary A.G. Kawamura said in a press release. We thank her for her dedication as a public servant, and look forward to continuing to work with her in her new role in Washington, DC. Rayne is an effective

ABC's "Good Morning America" show is currently conducting what it calls the "GMA $15 Dinner Dare" series. The segment highlights celebrity chefs, such as Mario Batali, who prepare meals with ingredients that cost under $15. The series also highlights food banks across the country, and as part of the segment, GMA has joined forces with Feeding America (formerly named America's Second Harvest) to supply food to 206 food banks in the United States, Guam and Puerto Rico. As of May 4, GMA had tallied up donations of 417,000 pounds of food from retailers, producers and processors from across the

Affiliated Foods Southwest Inc. and its subsidiary Produce Pre-Pak, both headquartered in Little Rock, AR, filed separate voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy petitions. Though they filed Chapter 11, which typically indicates the company will continue to do business, Cleveland attorney Mark Amendola of Martyn & Associates said that this is a "liquidating Chapter 11," which will eventually be turned into a Chapter 7, as the company has indicated that it is going out of business. In fact, he said that the firm's attorneys have said that the last day that the doors would be open would probably be

Ballantine Produce Co. Inc., headquartered in Sanger, CA, has closed its packing and marketing operations but will continue its farming operations, according to industry sources. It is not yet clear who will now be packing and marketing the fruit from Ballantine's company orchards or where the outside growers Ballantine represented will be taking their fruit. The exception is the fruit from Sun Valley Packing in Reedley, CA, which is owned by the Walter Jones family. That fruit, consisting of more than 3,300 acres of peaches, plums, nectarines, Pluots, apricots, and Saturn peaches and

The Western desert melon deal starts in California's Imperial Valley, then moves to Yuma, AZ, before moving to Blythe, CA, and on to Phoenix. After the Phoenix harvest  which starts in mid-June  the deal continues to Californias Bakersfield area in late June and the Mendota, CA, area around July 1 for what is referred to as the West Side melon deal. The majority of growers in the desert wrap up harvests there by July 1. Mendota, CA-based Pappas & Co. grows cantaloupe and honeydew in the Imperial Valley and in Blythe. The companys sales manager, Rodney Van Bebber, told The Produce News May

California 2009 new potato acreage is estimated at 8,375 acres in Kern County, a barely noticeable increase from last year's 8,362 acres. The acreage is an improvement, however, since the 2008 acreage numbers showed a nearly 10 percent decline compared with 2007, according to published data from the Kern County Department of Agriculture. Kern Countys acreage numbers stood at 9,268 acres in 2007. The figures exclude the category the countys department of ag has for "chippers" or potato chips, a category that is not used in the calculations by the Kern Produce Shippers Association. Also, one