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Turning a delicious but odd-shaped fruit into a household favorite wasn’t in the plan when a group of grower-hobbyists banded together in 1924 to form the California Avocado Growers Exchange. And two more years would pass before Rudolph Hass of La Habra, California, would plant the state’s first Hass avocado tree.At the time, avocado growers had no quality standards, no distribution channels, and only one facility, a packinghouse in Vernon, California. During that first year, the Growers Exchange packed 18,000 pounds of avocados from that packinghouse and, in doing so, launched an industry.Though the Vernon packinghouse has long since closed, the company that sprang from that Growers’ Exchange - now known as Calavo Growers, Inc. - is still going strong some 81 years later. In 2005, this publicly traded, diversified, global agribusiness packed approximately 35 percent of the California avocado crop, nearly double the market share of its closest competitor. Three modern packinghouses - strategically located in Santa Paula and Temecula, California, and Uruapan, Michoacan, Mexico - teem with productivity and thrive on volume, packing approximately 200 million pounds per year. The company is now headquartered in Santa Paula, California and employs more than 500 people.

California’s first commercial cotton sprouted in 1862 in what would later become Kern County (where Calcot is headquartered today), but the San Joaquin Valley didn’t earn its reputation as a producer of “white gold” until the next century, after World War I, when the federal government wanted extra long staple cotton for military applications. The homegrown group began as the San Joaquin Cotton Growers in Delano in 1927 and has been headquartered in Bakersfield since 1931. The co-op grew out of a Delano grower’s frustration over the middlemen in the cotton industry.In 1926, Capt. Frank E. Green had a lunch meeting in a Delano hotel, where he pitched the idea of a growers’ cooperative to his peers. The grape and cotton farmer had been mulling the idea since 1922, when the Capper-Volstead Act passed, allowing farmers to form cooperative groups without violating anti-trust laws.

Since 1924, Ocean Mist Farms has pioneered the commercial planting and shipping of Artichokes in Castroville (a town that has become synonymous with the thorny, odd-looking little vegetable), and today it is recognized as the largest Artichoke operation in the United States. Through the Depression, labor strikes, wars, floods and freezes, Ocean Mist Farms' commitment to high quality and superior service has never wavered. Commitment to its customers has always dictated a continuous emphasis on quality assurance from soil to consumer.In 1924, Daniel Pieri, Amerigo and Angelo Del Chiaro, Alfred Tottino and James Bellone launched the California Artichoke & Vegetable Growers Corporation, renamed Ocean Mist Farms in January of 1995. Pieri had been in the produce business in San Francisco since 1908 and had considerable experience in growing Artichokes and Brussels Sprouts in the San Gregorio and Half Moon Bay areas, having earlier formed the San Francisco Artichoke Association and the Santa Cruz Vegetable Company.

No, it's not the redwoods that California Giant produces -- it's strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries. In order to supply its customers with berries throughout the entire year, the company has growing operations in California, Washington, Oregon, New Jersey, Florida, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. California Giant's berries are distributed to customers in the retail grocery, foodservice, and restaurant industries around the world. It also has extensive research and breeding operations, testing more than 15,000 new berry varieties every year. California Giant was founded in the 1970s by president Bill Moncovich and his partners.

California Vegetable Specialties is a specialty farming company dedicated to the consistent production of highest-quality California Endive. With growing fields throughout Northern California, the company is headquartered in the town of Rio Vista, in the historically rich agricultural region of the Sacramento River Delta. We produce white and red endive, as well as several specialty products for chefs, Endigia and Pissenlit.Richard Collins, a Sacramento native and graduate of the Agricultural and Managerial Economics program at the University of California, Davis, founded the company in 1983 as Rebel Farms. He chose the name in response to the many naysayers who deemed him foolish for trying to grow endive for the U.S. market. Today, California Vegetable Specialties is the only U.S. producer of endive, and dominates the market west of the Mississippi, selling nearly 4 million pounds of endive each year. Since 1987, California Vegetable Specialties has been a part of the French-based Darome Group of International Companies. The Darome Group operates in three business sectors: specialized agricultural production, food processing, and trade. Darome began working with CVS in 1985, and the "technology transfer" of endive production methods from Europe to California has been instrumental in the success of the California Endive.

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