September 2018 - Page 2 of 2 - Western Growers Association Western Growers Association

Preventive Benefits Are a Win-Win

September 14th, 2018

The Affordable Care Act requires non-grandfathered health benefit plans to offer preventive benefits with no cost sharing. While this is an inflexible legal mandate, there are valuable long-term gains when employees use these benefits. These gains include having healthier and more productive employees and catching chronic health conditions in the early stages before they become catastrophic.

Encouraging your employees to use their preventive benefits can contribute to decreased utilization rates, lower absenteeism and less health care spending. Western Growers Assurance Trust encourages its participating employers to leverage preventive benefits to boost your employees’ health and productivity.

The True Cost of Having Unhealthy Employees

Encouraging the utilization of preventive care benefits can help employers curtail the staggering cost of providing health care coverage each year. In 2016 alone, U.S. health care spending reached $3.3 trillion, or $10,348 per person, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The three top health care spending areas were:

• Hospital care. This area made up about one third of all health care spending, reaching $1.1 trillion.

• Physician and clinical services. This area made up about 20 percent of all health care spending, $664.9 billion.

• Prescription drugs. Ten percent of all spending was for prescription drugs, which reached $328.6 billion. The rise in prescription costs was attributed to an increase in spending on new medicines and price growth for existing brand-name drugs.

In addition to health care spending, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Foundation, Business Pulse, reports that U.S. employers lose approximately $225.8 billion a year, or $1,685 per employee, due to absenteeism caused by illness, chronic diseases and work-related injuries.

By far, the biggest hit to an employer’s health care budget is for the treatment of employees with chronic health conditions. According to the CDC, chronic conditions such as heart disease, cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and stroke account for 75 percent of the nation’s healthcare spending. The CDC states that “most chronic diseases can be prevented by eating well, being physically active, avoiding tobacco and excessive drinking, and getting regular health screenings.”

Annual preventive screenings give doctors the opportunity to check an employee’s current health status and can typically catch a potential chronic health condition when it is less expensive to treat. Once diagnosed, a care management program, like the one operated by WGAT’s affiliate company, Pinnacle Health Management (PHM), can provide a next-step managed approach to those who have one of the chosen conditions. PHM takes a three-pronged approach to managing top chronic conditions such as diabetes and high cholesterol by providing participants with discounted or free medications, educational materials and monthly counseling sessions with a registered nurse.

Don’t be stuck paying extra health care dollars annually when you can maximize the preventive services you offer to employees. Here are some ways to encourage your employees to use these benefits:

• Regularly communicate what free annual screenings are available for all adults, women and children, encouraging employees to get them done each year. An updated list is provided at HealthCare.gov by searching preventive health benefits.

• Remind employees to get their dental cleanings twice a year. If employees do not have dental coverage, encourage them to seek affordable teeth cleanings through local dental providers.

• August is National Immunization Awareness Month and a perfect opportunity to publicize the importance of vaccinations for people of all ages. An updated list is provided at CDC.gov by searching NIAM.

• Publicize websites that provide information on practicing safe sex to prevent unwanted pregnancies and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Current information is provided through PlannedParenthood.org and WebMd.com by searching safe sex.

• Promote discounted health services such as a telehealth program if your company offers one. For example, every WGAT health plan includes access to a Doctor on Demand telehealth program, which connects employees with board-certified physicians via computer or phone to discuss common medical or mental health issues. Doctor on Demand also coordinates lab services.

• Also for purchasers of the WGAT health plan with staff who live or work in Salinas, Watsonville, Santa Maria, or Oxnard, encourage them to use their local Cedar Health and Wellness Center in these areas. Every Cedar Center offers low co-pays, convenient hours and bilingual services.

Encouraging your employees to use their preventive services makes good business sense. It helps prevent employees from getting sicker so employers like you don’t have to pay those bills for higher cost treatments and services. If you want more information on the WGAT health plan or are interested in purchasing the plan, contact Western Growers Insurance Services at (800) 333-4WGA.

Tags: Insurance
Posted in WG&S Magazine, September / October 2018 Issue | No Comments »

Food Origins: Precision Ag Startup Puts Actionable Data into Hands of Growers

September 14th, 2018

By Stephanie Metzinger

We constantly hear that the collection of data connecting farm to fork is valuable, and Nathan Dorn believes that when it comes to data, more is better. Dorn jettisoned the regular career for the life of an entrepreneur and created a traceability software company called Food Origins with a colleague, Richard Sowers, in 2015. Now it is a 24-7 passion.

Food Origins offers precision yield data collection for hand-harvested crops to help farmers make smarter decisions. Using a low-cost, handheld device equipped with high-tech sensors, Food Origins collects harvest data in real time—including when, where and how fast crops are picked. This information is then passed on to the grower to assist with the three main components of farm decision-making: obtaining relevant data, acquiring insight through analysis, and enabling efficient management.

When the company initially launched, they first decided to capture data that affected the problems the agricultural industry was challenged with every day. “When I was pursuing my MBA, I compared the systematic tools farmers had to solve their challenges in the high value, hand-labor crops to the row crops of the Midwest,” said Dorn. “There was a huge gap between the data available to the produce farmers and the problems they faced.”

A farm kid from the sorghum and corn fields of Nebraska, Dorn first focused on the approach of the lower value crops. How could corn at $3.50 per bushel and 150 bushels per acre afford to detail the yield on a precise meter by meter level, but strawberries at $50,000 per acre could only capture rough yields of arbitrary blocks? With that mindset, he decided to concentrate on developing the tools that could transform decision making of hand-harvested crops such as berries, grapes, lettuce, broccoli and melons.

At first, Dorn and Sowers looked to the decisions Midwest farms made from the massive amounts of data gathered by GPS on tractors and combines. “We found that once farmers knew their data, they changed their equipment, fertilization and seed practices, and in some cases, even stopped farming,” said Dorn. “The common connection was to make more money. It was clear our objectives were to use data for that purpose.”

As the technology advanced and the company matured, Dorn and the Food Origins team started putting data tools into the hands of farmworkers. “The decision makers who make or break our business are our harvesters. If they are our most valuable resource, we need to empower them with data,” he said.

To collect the data, the startup utilizes unique labels with individualized barcodes that are pre-applied to produce packaging. When employees scan the bar codes in the field, the location, package and employee ID is registered and that data is passed into Food Origins’ algorithmic tools. This data then provides decision makers with information regarding the progress of the harvest, the density of the production in the field and the speed of harvest.

Food Origins is taking traceability one step further by assisting growers in understanding the economics of their crops and identifying the break-even point of mechanization and other new tools and technologies at their disposal. Most recently, Food Origins worked with berry farmers to help them assess the efficiency of a machine harvest compared to hand picking. The startup followed 10 workers for a week, collecting hand-harvesting data from each worker. The next week, a harvesting aid was employed and harvesting data from the same workers was again collected. The result? Workers were able to harvest 40 percent faster in the same time frame using the machine.

“We were able to show them, first-hand, how changes in their system made more money for their business and the farm workers,” explained Dorn. “When they viewed their farm with this new lens, they committed to millions in investments that improved the health of their business and quality of their product.”

In addition to allowing farmers to have the information needed to optimize operations, Food Origins is expanding the use of its software to consumers and retailers. According to Dorn, farmers want to grow what people want to buy and part of Food Origins’ future will be to connect the data between farmers and consumers without adding cost.

“Part of our goal is to integrate as many of the decisions as possible to address the challenges of the farmers. To achieve that, we regularly partner with sensor, imagery and automation companies,” said Dorn on collaborating with fellow start-up companies within the Western Growers Center for Innovation & Technology (WGCIT).

“Starting a company is tough and learning to navigate through all the nuances of running a business can be tricky,” said Dorn, who joined the WGCIT in 2016. “The services that Western Growers offers us, such as legal consultation, financial and marketing services and health care benefits, are incredibly valuable to us. The more Western Growers and the Center can help with taking those organizational challenges off our backs, the more we’ll be able to make a difference for the industry as a whole.”

Tags: Ag Tech, Farm Labor, Technology
Posted in WG&S Magazine, September / October 2018 Issue | No Comments »

#TimesUp: Employers Brace for #MeToo Related Litigation, Legislation

September 14th, 2018

What began last October with the Harvey Weinstein scandal, has resulted in a tidal wave of sexual harassment and assault accusations on social media under the hashtag #MeToo, and a public reckoning for dozens of high profile men in Hollywood, broadcast journalism, Fortune 500 companies and beyond. The movement has put sexual harassment and gender discrimination in the workplace at center stage, and has sprung another hashtag: #TimesUp.

The Time’s Up movement was sparked by an open letter published in the New York Times in November 2017 from the Alianza Nacional de Campesinas (the National Farmworker Women’s Alliance.) The letter claimed to have been written on behalf of 700,000 domestic female farmworkers, shining a light on the sexual harassment they have collectively experienced.

It should be no surprise that there is pent up anger and frustration among women across all industries and socioeconomic backgrounds. In 2016, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) released a report detailing the findings of the Task Force on the Study of Harassment in the Workplace. According to the report, 1 in 4 women in the workplace have experienced sexual harassment on the job.

One byproduct of these movements is a deluge of complaints to human resources departments across the country. Human resource consultants are having trouble keeping up with their burgeoning caseloads of harassment investigations. We will likely see an uptick in EEOC and California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) charges as well as private lawsuits.

Preventing Harassment

Employers should take this opportunity to examine their anti-harassment policy as well as the effectiveness of their training programs. In California, sexual harassment prevention training has been mandated for supervisors since AB 1825 was first enacted in 2005. Since then, the requirements for trainers has been expanded and California farm labor contractors must provide sexual harassment prevention training to certain employees. FLC training requirements were expanded in January of this year with the passage of SB 295.

Indeed, federal law requires all employers, regardless of size, to take all reasonable steps to prevent harassment and stop it once it’s been discovered. Strong anti-harassment policies and training is a critical first step. Beyond that, a growing number of employers have implemented an anonymous hotline for employees to report sexual harassment and other misdeeds. An advantage of an anonymous hotline is that it may encourage employees to use the company’s internal reporting mechanism where the complaint can be addressed by the company, rather than the complainant seeking redress through a third party such as the EEOC or an attorney. Hotlines also have the benefit of ensuring the complaint is handled properly rather than potentially being dismissed by a supervisor. While sound policies, effective training and trusted reporting avenues are great tools to address and prevent sexual harassment in the workplace, as well as limit potential liability, employers must critically assess their company’s culture and work environment to determine if the company may be fostering an environment where harassment may be allowed to flourish.

Legislative Response

Seizing on the #MeToo movement, members of the California Legislature (and one in particular) are sponsoring a set of bills aimed at addressing sexual harassment in the workplace.

AB 3080 by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher (D-San Diego), would prohibit employers from requiring applicants or employees to arbitrate employment-related claims rather than go to court as a condition of employment. While the bill is being pushed as a measure to address sexual harassment, the bill would apply to any claim under the Labor Code or Fair Employment Housing Act. The measure has already passed the Senate and is now on the governor’s desk.

Another bill sponsored by Hannah Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara), SB 1300, would also place certain limits on requiring the employee to sign a release of claims or nondisparagement agreement.

Gonzalez Fletcher’s AB 3081 would require a client employer to share with a labor contractor all civil legal responsibility and civil liability for harassment for all workers supplied by that labor contractor.

SB 820, also by Gonzalez Fletcher, would ban the use of confidentiality agreements to conceal allegations and facts related to sexual harassment, assault and discrimination cases. SB 1038 by Assemblywoman Connie Leyva (D – Chino) provides that an employee is personally liable for an act of retaliation if that same employee committed the underlying act of harassment that prompted the complaint.

Western Growers and other business groups are pushing back, reminding legislators that these bills will result in a significant increase in lawsuits. As we approach the end of the legislative session at the time of this writing, it’s important to note that these bills may be amended, gutted, held in committee, or otherwise subject to change. While Western Growers takes elimination of harassment in the workplace seriously, the Association will keep members apprised as we learn the fate of these and other bills. In the meantime, employers should take all steps necessary to ensure they are not caught up in the #MeToo movement.

Tags: Regulations, Work Place Regulations
Posted in WG&S Magazine, September / October 2018 Issue | No Comments »

The Anatomy of the Outbreak Investigation

September 14th, 2018

As a cog in the machine of the Leafy Greens Task Force (a coalition of produce companies, trade associations and others committed to understanding the recent outbreaks associated with romaine and developing steps to prevent further occurrence), I wanted to share my perspective on some of the difficult issues that have been focal points of discussion for that group with regard to the recent E.coli outbreak.

The first thing on my list is how the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and industry work together on outbreaks, and the resolutions that stem from that work. Make no mistake, CDC and FDA staff are smart, committed and are accessible to industry during these events. It is their job to discover an outbreak, identify the commodity, identify the source and stop the distribution of contaminated products. Their bottom line is to protect public health and their immense challenge is the need to be both “fast and right.”

Typically, though not always, these events start with CDC who uses PulseNet to stitch together reports from discrete state departments of health to confirm that ill people in varying geographies are infected by a common source. Next they interview victims and healthy consumers to determine the likely food vehicle (source). Occasionally, they have product available to genetically confirm the source.

To “be right” they strive to have multiple lines of confirmation, including the epidemiologic information, traceback information and microbiological information, but to “be fast” they don’t always have the luxury of confirming all three lines. It is a difficult position for them. CDC and FDA try to keep industry representatives informed as they progress their thinking, and industry representatives regularly make themselves available to answer any questions that will help the agencies progress including offering information about products, seasons, distribution, etc. Industry representatives also challenge the agencies when their hypotheses don’t fit industry patterns. But in reality, there is little that trade organizations can do at this point of an investigation.

Once a food vehicle has been identified, the traceback, led by FDA, begins and it is at this point that trade organizations, who understand when, where and how products are grown, sold, transported, and marketed are much better positioned to help. This, however, is when individual companies begin to be contacted by FDA and FDA will not (nor should not) discuss these lines of investigation at this point because of the reputational and economic implications of naming names. Again the challenge is to be “fast and right” but traceback is a tedious step-by-step process that requires accurate documentation of each node within a supply chain to ensure that the source is identified correctly.

Ideally, FDA identifies a clear single source and the collateral impacts to other producers are minimal. In the most recent outbreak and traceback investigation, many cast aspersions on grower and handler traceability programs but delays were mostly within the first step back from the point of sale. While trade organizations can speak generally to supply lines, they cannot connect a point of sale to the distribution center that delivered the product to the store. This is an outbreak in which there are many lines of traceback and no convergence to identify a single source.

So because of the seasonality of supplies and multiple lines of investigation leading to a general area, FDA identifies a single region as the source and begins environmental assessments in that region in its attempts to more narrowly define the source. In addition, industry hopes the environmental investigation will help identify potential reservoirs for the pathogen, sources of contamination and mechanisms for introducing contamination into a field. Insight into these factors helps to understand vulnerabilities, what might have gone wrong and how we may be able to prevent future events. While FDA has indicated it is incumbent on industry to “resolve” the issues, and industry embraces this responsibility, this cannot be accomplished without full and transparent access to all the results of FDA’s environmental assessment. In this particular case, it has been an industry imperative to act in advance of the next growing season but we are hindered by FDA’s lack of detail on the results of the environmental assessment—which as of this writing in August may still be underway.

What We Know

So we are left with what we know and our own hypotheses. This includes knowledge that matching samples to outbreak strains have been identified in canal water within the area of investigation, that there were anomalous weather events near the region leading up to the point when product may have been harvested and that a large concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) is also present in the area of investigation. The Leafy Greens Task Force has taken on the task of using this sparse information to develop recommended changes to industry’s best food safety practices.

CAFOs are a recognized microbiological hazard when closely situated in areas of fresh produce production and may present varying levels of risk depending on many intrinsic factors of confined domesticated animal production as well as extrinsic environmental, topographical, hydrogeological, and crop management factors. The Leafy Greens Task Force organized a “working group” comprised of industry, academia, and other interested parties to discuss these factors, the risk they may present, common mitigation strategies to minimize risk, and to make any necessary recommendations to industry on how to further minimize the potential for microbial contamination from CAFOs. Additionally, the group is tasked with identifying priority knowledge gaps as a prelude to recommending key solutions-based research opportunities.

While this effort was born out of a rapid industry response to the severe and recent outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 linked to romaine from the desert growing region where a large CAFO is intimately proximate with fresh produce operations, it is important to emphasize that the cause of the outbreak is unknown and that this CAFO has not been specifically implicated. One important observation from this CAFO working group effort is that while the CAFO may be a reservoir for E. coli 0157:H7, there are many factors that influence the potential discharge of pathogenic bacteria from a CAFO into the surrounding area and many more factors that may determine or influence potential contamination in a field(s). These include such things as geography, weather and, perhaps most significantly, the management and best practices within. The natural tendency of our industry is to gravitate toward “buffer zones”—defined as areas set aside to account for offsite movement and deposition of, in this case pathogens, where there will be no deleterious effects. In fact, many in the supply chain are already requiring buffer zones of varying distance (most are around 1-2 miles) that drastically restrict where leafy greens (not just romaine) may be grown.

Where is the science to support the establishment of these distances? To date, the research on the offsite movement of pathogens and the subsequent deposition and survival in leafy greens fields has been sparse. The CAFO working group recommended a distance of 1,200 feet from the edge of a concentrated animal feeding operation larger than 1,000 head as a proximate safe distance and further encouraged growers to perform an aggressive hazard and risk assessment in each area where a CAFO is near fresh produce fields. Growers need to make site specific determinations based on numerous factors (some named above) as to how far away from an animal operation fields and surface water sources should be.

Set distances impact property rights and economic livelihoods—but no set distance can guarantee safety. Instead, careful analysis of hazard, risk and implementation of controls should drive decisions. If approached correctly at the outset, growers can minimize the potential for contamination and prevent outbreaks, which in turn minimizes the collateral impacts associated with a CDC and FDA investigation and traceback.

Tags: Food Safety
Posted in WG&S Magazine, September / October 2018 Issue | No Comments »

In an Era of Binge Watching, Video is a Tool to Grow Business

September 14th, 2018

By Stephanie Metzinger

There used to be a time when you would have to set your alarm so you would not miss a minute of your favorite television show. When you would be left in shock as an episode ended with a jaw-dropping cliffhanger and you would have to wait a full seven days to learn what happened next.

Those days are long gone.

Video streaming services that offer on-demand television—such as Netflix, Hulu and Amazon—have drastically changed how the public consumes entertainment, news and information. According to Deloitte’s 2018 Digital Media Trends Survey, 63 percent of U.S. households subscribe to a traditional cable service—a 10 percent drop from 2016. The survey also indicated that 55 percent of Americans now subscribe to at least one video-streaming service. A large reason for this is because binge watching continues to grow. Eighty-six percent of millennials admit to binge viewing, taking in an average of seven episodes per sitting.

On-demand has even infiltrated social media. Last year, Facebook introduced a feature called Watch, where users can subscribe to a “show” and follow the series through the Facebook platform. Instagram did something similar with its recently created IGTV. What sets Facebook Watch and IGTV apart from Netflix or Hulu is that anyone can be a creator or publisher. As audiences continue to embrace on-demand and streaming, food and ag-related companies have the prime opportunity to leverage video as a resource to deliver key messages and further bridge the gap between food producers and consumers. This can be a series of short videos demonstrating how different commodities are harvested or a sequence of quick videos that dispel myths about agriculture.

In addition to creating videos that are binge-watch worthy, here are some alternatives that can be easily implemented.

Live Video

With a click of two buttons on your smart phone, you can create a live video in an instant. Live videos and stories continue to triumph on Facebook and Instagram. In fact, a recent survey indicated that 82 percent of customers would rather watch live videos from a brand than read blogs or view social media posts.

Western Growers recently went “live” on Facebook, filming a live demonstration of how growers are utilizing drones on the farm. With just an iPhone, WG live streamed Danny Royer of Bowles Farming Co. speaking about the different ways drones are deployed on the farm; the type of data drones provide; and what types of management decisions have been influenced by the use of drones and the information they collect. Nearly 4,000 viewers had the opportunity to get an up close and personal look at the Bowles-branded drones, and in those six minutes, they learned how farmers are not only producers of food, but leaders in innovation and technology.

Company Story Videos

In many cases, the video feature on your phone is more sophisticated than recording video on a regular camera. Western Growers members can harness this easy-to-use technology to create videos that showcase a company’s story, resulting in deeper relationships with consumers.

Examples of company story videos include managers speaking about organizational values and culture, C-level executives sharing programs unique to the brand, or employees providing a brief explanation about their role in the company.

These types of videos are an effective way to show viewers that your company is comprised of real people who are dedicated to delivering healthy, nutritious fresh produce to the world each and every day.

Educational Videos

More than 1.8 billion users log onto YouTube every month searching for content where they can learn something new. Now, more than ever, consumers are interested in where their food comes from, and the agricultural industry can take advantage of this opportunity by creating educational and how-to videos.

For example, Western Growers recently produced and shared a video in which Charlie Montgomery of Rousseau Farming Company explained how baby carrots are created. Many consumers that commented on the video were unaware of the fact that baby carrots come from real carrots; most assumed that these bite-sized carrots were grown and harvested smaller. Due to the educational value of the video, these consumers shared the video on their social networks with their friends and the video ended up reaching more than 12,000 people.

Building off the momentum of Montgomery’s videos, Western Growers later released a simple video with text (and no audio), outlining the steps on how baby carrots are made. To date, “The Secret Behind How Baby Carrots Are Made” is Western Growers’ most watched video on Facebook, having reached nearly 655,000 people.

In an era of binge watching and on-demand services, videos are an easy way to connect with consumers, tell your story and further build a cadre of brand ambassadors and agvocates. WG is dedicated to helping our members understand and utilize these cutting-edge resources. If you are interested in creating your own videos to share on social media, please feel free to reach out to us.

Tags: Technology
Posted in WG&S Magazine, September / October 2018 Issue | No Comments »

Western Growers Member Directory of Attorneys and Law Firms

September 14th, 2018

Since Western Growers began more than 90 years ago, attorneys specializing in agricultural issues has been part of the association’s landscape. Staff attorneys have long been an integral part of the organization reaching a peak during the 1970s when unionization was a daily concern. Today, Western Growers’ legal staff has a significant presence and gets materially involved in many member issues including labor concerns, regulatory issues and business dealings.

But in today’s complex world, there are also dozens of law firms that specialize in the ag space and are members of Western Growers. Many of these members participates in the association’s Ag Legal Network (WGALN). Participants in this referral service agree to give Western Growers members a 15 percent discount off of their normal legal services rates.*

The WG-member law firms range in size from solo practitioners to international mega firms. They specialize in a wide array of legal issues to fit virtually any need a business or grower may have, from business contracts to labor problems to patents and trademark work. Below is a roster of WG legal members. Members of the WGALN have that designation highlighted in bold typeface and their practice areas are noted. WG legal members who advertise in this issue also earned a descriptive phrase further explaining their scope of practice.

Afsar Law Group

Amir Afsar

78-000 Fred Waring Drive, Suite 203

Palm Desert, CA 92211

Phone: 760-345-3110