IRVINE, CALIF. (October 20, 2021) – As the drought continues to devastate California almond growers, Almond Board of California Chief Science Officer Josette Lewis is looking for a silver lining by studying ways to give almond groves a sustainable second life.

In the most recent episode of Voices of the Valley, the podcast hosted by Dennis Donohue, the Director of Western Growers Center for Innovation & Technology, and Candace Wilson, VP of Business Development at GreenVenus, Lewis talked about recycling almond orchard biomass.

“We have initiated a program to look at adding value to almond co-products or biomass that comes out of almond production,” she said. “The kernel that we need is only about a third of the biomass that comes out of an almond orchard every year. We have hulls, which is the fleshy outer coating, kind of like the part of the peach that we eat, and then the shells, and then there is the woody biomass. We’re looking at ways to add value to that, both as a zero-waste strategy and as a way to add value to the industry.”

The full orchard recycling works on a number of levels by giving trees a second life after they have been pulled out of the earth.

“After about 20-25 years, almond trees are no longer as productive. Historically those almond orchards would have been burned … for air quality reasons we can no longer do that,” Lewis said. “In whole orchard recycling, the trees are taken down, they are chipped with some very large equipment and then that massive quantity of almond chips are put low into the soil. It’s not spread on top like compost. As a result of that practice, we can sequester very significant amounts of carbon deep in the soil profile and contribute to mitigating climate change. Not only does it have environmental benefits, it also improves the water holding capacity.””

Voices of the Valley is produced by Western Growers and its Center for Innovation & Technology. The embed code for this week’s episode is below:

<iframe src=”https://anchor.fm/voicesofthevalley/embed/episodes/Almond-Evolution-Self-Pollinating-Varieties–Rootstock-Gene-Editing–Labor-Saving-Tech-e191046” height=”102px” width=”400px” frameborder=”0″ scrolling=”no”></iframe> 

IRVINE, CALIF. (October 27, 2021) – On the heels of closing a $10.9 million Series A round of funding, Burro CEO Charlie Andersen said his company is set to meet the needs of growers – even as those needs are constantly changing and close to impossible to predict.

In the most recent episode of Voices of the Valley, the podcast hosted by Dennis Donohue, the Director of Western Growers Center for Innovation & Technology, and Candace Wilson, VP of Business Development at GreenVenus, Andersen, who grew up on a working farm, outlined the cultural differences between growers and technologists.

“Growers versus technologists are two very distinctly different worlds,” he said. “People that grow up on a farm, they know how to hustle. They are reacting on the fly to something. Things are outside of their control but they have to make it happen regardless. People in the technology domain tend to get focused on the hardest problems. In our case, we have both of those perspectives within our team – and there can be tension between the two viewpoints, for sure – but that leads to a product that is farm-compatible but still very technology-driven.”

Burro, which won the AgSharks competition sponsored by S2G Ventures and Western Growers in 2018,  is “Disney’s Wall-E in a 1.0 format for agriculture,” Andersen said, an autonomous cart that can be used to haul crops like table grapes, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries and nursery crops out from the field. And as long as the company iterates to meet the need of its customers, the future of robotics in agtech is almost unlimited, he said.

“Building robots to go out into the world is really, really, really hard,” Andersen said. “You have to build a lot, you have to fail a lot. Separately, people are really, really, really good at doing a lot of flexible stuff on the fly in unstructured outdoor areas…our company thesis has been, for one, technology is all about the people. You’re not going to have fields with nobody in them whatsoever and just robots operating in in quiet. We’re a long way from that. If we think that in 20-30 years we’re going to have robots do most tasks, the question becomes: How do you start with something functional today and build towards that world?”

Voices of the Valley is produced by Western Growers and its Center for Innovation & Technology. The embed code for this week’s episode is below:

<iframe src=”https://anchor.fm/voicesofthevalley/embed/episodes/What-Happens-When-Your-Co-Worker-is-a-Robot-e19bb0b” height=”102px” width=”400px” frameborder=”0″ scrolling=”no”></iframe>

IRVINE, Calif. (October 28, 2021) – Out of more than 100 applicants, five agtech start-up companies have been selected to go head-to-head in the Western Growers/S2G Ventures 2021 AgSharks® Competition to win a $250,000 minimum investment and potential access to farm acreage to pilot their technologies. These startups, which are all developing systems and technologies that promote a more healthy and sustainable food and agriculture system, will pitch their inventions to a panel of AgSharks Judges in front of 400 fresh produce farmers and industry leaders during the WG Annual Meeting in San Diego on November 9, 2021.

The selected companies are as follows:

• 3Bar Biologics: 3Bar Biologics provides farmers with the most cost-effective, sustainable and biological products that are activated in a self-contained package, delivering 100 percent fresh microbes at the time of application.
• Boost Biomes: Using state-of-the-art DNA sequencing to identify microbial products that could be sold in the commercial marketplace, Boost Biomes’ solutions can be used in both the food and agriculture sectors.
• Global Water Innovations: Global Water Innovations brings to market a basket of emerging breakthrough technologies that will undercut current market pricing by 30 percent for desalination of both brackish groundwater and produced water.
• Naïo Technologies: Naïo Technologies develops autonomous software for agriculture, enabling autonomous field operations, fleet management and “intelligent farming” while providing fast return on investment for growers as well as facilitating more sustainable farming practices.
• Vivent SA: Vivent SA uses unique, patented, electrophysiology sensors and artificial intelligence to give farmers instantaneous insight into crop health.

In addition to investment capital and access to farmland, the winning startup(s) will receive international recognition, mentoring from S2G and WG and access to WG’s expansive network of leading fresh produce companies.

WG and S2G also announced the slate of AgSharks Judges who will be offering feedback, equity investment offers, acreage for use in pilot programs or a combination of the three. The panel—which is comprised of growers, shippers, processors and venture capitalists—is as follows:

• Alexandra Allen, Compliance Counsel, Main Street Produce, Inc.
• Audre Kapacinskas, Vice President, S2G Ventures
• Frank Maconachy, President and CEO, Ramsay Highlander, Inc.
• Dominic Muzzi Jr., CEO/COO, Muzzi Family Farms, LLC
• Cristina Rohr, Principal, S2G Ventures
• Matthew Walker, Managing Director, S2G Ventures

Western Growers and S2G Ventures created the AgSharks Competition in 2017 to identify key innovations in the fresh produce industry and support agtech startups in bringing their technology to market. To date, three companies (Hazel Technologies, AgVoice and Burro) have received $2.5 million total in funding from the competition.

About Western Growers:
Founded in 1926, Western Growers represents local and regional family farmers growing fresh produce in California, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico. Western Growers members and their workers provide over half the nation’s fresh fruits, vegetables and tree nuts, including half of America’s fresh organic produce. Connect and learn more about Western Growers on Twitter and Facebook. 

About S2G Ventures:
S2G Ventures is a multi-stage venture fund investing across the food, agriculture, oceans and seafood markets. The fund’s mission is to catalyze innovation to meet consumer demands for healthy and sustainable food systems. S2G has identified sectors across the food system that are ripe for change and is building a multi-stage portfolio including seed, venture and growth-stage investments. Core areas of interest for S2G are agriculture, oceans, ingredients, infrastructure and logistics, IT and hardware, food safety and technology, retail and restaurants, and consumer brands. S2G Ventures is a part of Builders Private Capital, the direct investment arm of Builders Vision, an impact platform dedicated to building a humane and healthy planet. For more information about S2G, visit s2gventures.com, tune in to our podcast, or connect with us on LinkedIn.

###

IRVINE, CALIF. (Oct. 13, 2021) – With the close of applications for the 2021 AgSharks Competition, the founder of previous winner Hazel Technologies is reflecting on the evolution of his company and the jumpstart it received by participating in the $250,000 pitch contest sponsored by Western Growers and S2G Ventures.

“I don’t know another venture capital firm out there that’s actively involved in a trade organization in the same way – and they need to be,” said CEO and Co-Founder of Hazel Technologies Aidan Mouat in this week’s episode of Voices of the Valley, a podcast hosted by Dennis Donohue, the Director of the Western Growers Center for Innovation and Technology, and Candace Wilson, Vice President of Business Development at GreenVenus. “You get to pitch all the time – I’ve pitched 500 times, I’ve won $1 million in competitions, I’ve done all kinds of crazy stuff. That was the first pitch I’ve ever done to people who might actually buy the product.”

Hazel Technologies is the first of three former AgSharks winners that will appear in this season of Voices of the Valley. Upcoming episodes will feature Charlie Anderson, CEO of Burro, and Bruce Rasa, CEO and Co-Founder of AgVoice.

Hazel Technologies reduces food waste by providing contact-free biochemical solutions that can control perishability in fruits and vegetables. Via package inserts and sachets, Mouat said, shelf life can be increased by controlling the metabolic rate of fruits and vegetables. The company now treats 6.5 billion pounds of food a year, working with 180 customers in more than 10 countries.

“That’s what I’m most proud of … that it resonated with the customers,” Mouat said. “That’s what AgSharks does, and it needs to be done more often. That was transformative. We couldn’t be here today if that hadn’t happened.”

More information about AgSharks can be found here. The embed for Mouat’s Voices of the Valley episode is below: