Richard Ha writes:

I’ve been meeting in Washington, D.C. as a member of the Department of Agriculture’s Fruit and Vegetable Industry advisory committee, which was reconstituted this past year. Twenty five of us were appointed to advise the Secretary of Agriculture on issues that are important to the nation’s fruit and vegetable growers.

We broke down into various subject committees last year and there were several meetings throughout the year to determine what the most important issues are at present. This meeting was to decide which issues we would send on to the Secretary of Agriculture and recommend for action.

Some of the issues are: labor availability, food safety, regionally adapted plant breeding programs, backlogs of container cargo at West Coast ports, citrus greening and appropriate timely reactions to important plant diseases, and GMO labeling.

Next on our agenda is to develop recommendations for each subject area.

This last photo was just for fun: