Cal State PPN
May 28, 2011 7:02 AM   Subscribe

Cal State PPN
Ever wonder what the patterns of red color on peaches of nectarines are about? Do you know when you should put stone fruit in the fridge - and when you shouldn't? You knew about stems and pits, but did you now that peaches, plums, and nectarines have cheeks — and shoulders? Here's everything you didn't realize you wanted to know about peaches, plums, and nectarines.

Since it's Memorial Day weekend, and the stone fruit season is underway, I thought I'd put this up. Cal State PPN is a site that aims to educate employees of retailers at both the corporate and store level about California peaches, plums, and nectarines.

I learned an enormous amount about stone fruit in the process of putting this together. I think it's really interesting stuff - I don't think its appeal is limited to just retail workers. Anybody who wants to know more about the food they eat would enjoy it.

This is a project I did for the California Tree Fruit Agreement, which is the marketing order for California peaches, plums, and nectarines.

Oh, and I didn't pick that eye-searing red color. If only our ad agency had gone with a professional white background...
Role: researcher, content writer
posted by jocelmeow (8 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite

Why the redirect? Took me a bit to figure out what PPN meant. Odd to put hat on the front page of the site. Otherwise looks good. I like the red.
posted by cjorgensen at 3:45 PM on May 29, 2011


Looks good. I work in a grocery co-op and I'll show it to the produce crew on Monday.
posted by a humble nudibranch at 12:16 AM on May 30, 2011


I don't know why they chose to do the redirect either. Might have had something to do with building awareness for the marketing order's main domain. I dislike the mortarboards, personally. The landing page didn't originally have them, but I think someone high up in CTFA asked for them. Sort of a make the logo bigger thing.

And I'm glad it was a hit with you, ahn! I think these fruits are one of the most difficult things to handle at retail. I hope it will prove helpful.
posted by jocelmeow at 5:53 AM on May 30, 2011


It's a 404 now.
posted by Deathalicious at 9:55 PM on May 31, 2011


404 for me too.
posted by gomichild at 11:24 PM on June 1, 2011


Damn you, California! I want to eat your fruit! Please let me find out more about that!
posted by Deathalicious at 7:35 AM on June 2, 2011


Oh, crap. Well, the long and short of it is this: I got jessamyn's approval to put this up, even though I'd done the project a few years ago (I'm disabled now). The California Tree Fruit Agreement's referendum failed this past winter That means that not enough of the growers who paid into the program voted for it to continue. So apparently they just got around to pulling the website. I'm sorry, folks. I have all the files saved, because I knew this was going to happen. I'll see if I can get permission to put them up elsewhere, although I doubt I'll get approval for that.
posted by jocelmeow at 8:24 AM on June 5, 2011


Okay, I have an email in to the last president of the organization to see if I can get permission to host the site elsewhere. My sincere apologies for the 404. I knew that might happen eventually, but wasn't expecting it so soon.

The peach and nectarine referendum was what failed this past winter. There were almost enough votes for it to pass - 63%, I think, with 66% needed for it to pass, but USDA could have given permission for the order to keep operating with 63% approval. The problem, though, was that the 63% was by count...by volume, only 36% voted for the orders to continue. There's been massive consolidation in this business in the past eight or so years, and the big guys don't want to give out of their budgets to support CTFA - they'd rather spend on their own marketing programs.

Anyway, the plum order was still in place, and could have continued alone, but it looks like they decided to not even do that, and just shut the whole organization down. It's a shame. CTFA was founded in 1933 - it may have the claim to earliest established marketing order - and it'd survived all sorts of upheaval. The consolidation was just too much for it, it looks like. So sad. It was great to have a job that consisted of promoting something so healthy grown by almost entirely family farmers.
posted by jocelmeow at 8:57 AM on June 5, 2011


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