WG Member News

January 14th, 2022

By Ann Donahue

John D’Arrigo Receives Lifetime Achievement Award from the University of Arizona

CEO and Chairman of the Board for D’Arrigo California John D’Arrigo recently received the prestigious Eugene G. Sander Lifetime Achievement Award from the University of Arizona for his leadership and service to the agricultural community and U of A’s Yuma Center of Excellence for Desert Agriculture (YCEDA).

In 2013, D’Arrigo was one of the founding members of YCEDA, an innovative public-private partnership that connects top scientists with the agricultural industry. Among the issues tackled by the center are increasing production efficiencies through disease and water management, food safety, crop yield maximization and advanced agtech.

“I am honored and humbled to have received the Eugene G. Sander Lifetime Achievement Award,” D’Arrigo said. “My experience working with University of Arizona and YCEDA has been one of the most productive and rewarding public-private partnerships to date. YCEDA is an excellent example of effective and efficient public-private partnership bringing scientific research and the produce industry together to solve real-time agricultural issues experienced in the desert growing regions.”

The award was established in 2011 and is presented to an individual who demonstrates superior performance in activities reflected in the mission of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at U of A.

“We are honored to present John D’Arrigo the Eugene G. Sander Lifetime Achievement Award,” said Shane C. Burgess, Vice President for the Division of Agriculture, Life and Veterinary Sciences, and Cooperative Extension for the University of Arizona. “John is one of the true leaders of agriculture in the United States and an invaluable partner to the Yuma Center of Excellence for Desert Agriculture.”

Gary Pasquinelli Named Arizona Farm Bureau Farmer of the Year

Longtime Pasquinelli Produce Company Owner and CEO Gary Pasquinelli was named the 2021 Arizona Farm Bureau Farmer of the Year, an honor that recognizes his standout achievements as a farmer, leader, innovator and advocate for the vegetable industry.

The award from the Arizona Farm Bureau comes in tandem with the news that Pasquinelli will receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Arizona.

Pasquinelli Produce Company, which has been a grower-shipper for more than 70 years, farms 9,000 acres of winter vegetables, seedless watermelons and rotational crops in Yuma County.

Pasquinelli was the longest-serving member of the Western Growers Board of Directors when he stepped down in 2019 after 45 years; he received the Award of Honor, WG’s highest tribute, in 2014. His son-in-law, Alex Muller, now serves on the board and is Pasquinelli Produce Company’s President.

“I believe that the strongest part of my company is the folks out there working in the fields,” Pasquinelli, who was ordained a deacon in the Diocese of Tucson in 1991, said on his company’s website. “Without them, we couldn’t do what we do. They are entrusted to me to take care of. They are God’s children just like I am. They are brothers and sisters, so I have a duty to take care of those folks. My motto has always been: ‘On the face of a dollar bill, you have the image of Washington. On the face of a farm worker, you have God’s image.’”

*pictured above: Gary Pasquinelli was honored for his 45 years of service on Western Growers’ Board of Directors several years ago.

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Steve Mangapit on Driving Operational Excellence in 2022

January 14th, 2022

Wielding more than 20 years of experience, business mogul Steve Mangapit steps in as Western Growers (WG) first Chief Operating Officer. He focuses on advancing and elevating operational efficiencies, improvements and innovations throughout the Western Growers Family of Companies.

Q. Can you share a snapshot of your professional background?

A. When I was younger, I was a hotshot with data and analytics. I started in the business back when I lived in Las Vegas, cutting my teeth on reporting and financial reporting. I was very adept with the technical side of things. As I have gotten older and grown in my career, my strength has become in operations, strategy, leadership and communications.

Q. Looking back at your career collectively, what are you most proud of?

A. I am most proud of the people that I have mentored and helped further their careers—those who I have seen develop, get promoted and grow into leadership positions. Throughout my career, I’ve won big contracts, achieved goals and earned bonuses, but at the end of the day, what really excites me is seeing people be successful. This is the flashlight of my accomplishments.

Q. What are your priorities this first year?

A. I started on January 1 and plan on focusing on two priorities in 2022:

  1. Strengthening WG Assurance Trust (WGAT) by bringing in more efficiencies, making sure its competitive and innovating new processes to further bring value to customers.
  2. Enhancing our own team by ensuring we have the right tools and training for all of our staff to efficiently help customers.

Q. From 2010 to 2014, you worked at WG with WGAT/Pinnacle Claims Management, Inc. before accepting another position in Los Angeles. Why did you decide to return to the WG Family of Companies?

A. My initial tenure at WG was a great opportunity for me to take on challenges and have some wins. There was a lot of cross-functional efforts across different departments which resulted in many successes and the huge win of earning the Covered California contract.

Coming back, I’m excited about the opportunity and challenge. I’m not looking for a “feet on the desk” type of job; I’m looking for something that is exciting where I can build and enhance the team and win. I like winning.

Q. What are you most looking forward to in your role as WG’s very first COO?

A. Making a difference and improving the lives of both our members and employees. This includes helping our customers save money and provide better benefits to their team as well as guiding our own team in growing their careers.

___________________________________________________________________________

STEVE MANGAPIT SNAPSHOT

Name: Steve Mangapit

Title: Chief Operating Officer

Family: Married to my wife, Chau, with 2 children: Audrey (5 years old) and Thomas (8 months old).

Favorite TV Show: Succession. It’s a good example of the company culture you don’t want to have.

Preferred Podcast: The Rewatchables (a podcast discussing must-see movies)

Hobbies: Basketball. Golf. Hiking. Spending time with family.

Favorite App: Twitter

Role Model: My Grandfather. I always admired how he treats people, his attitude toward life and how he puts family first.

Weekend Getaway: We have a cabin in Big Bear and go there regularly in the winter and spring.

Proudest Home Project: I dabble in woodworking projects, and the coolest thing I’ve built has been a massive pegboard wall with movable shelves.

Fun Fact: I’m a big fan of “The Office” and won a charity raffle to have actor Steve Carell do my son’s baby announcement and gender reveal.

Stephanie Metzinger conducted this interview.

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Meet Your WG Women Ambassador: Lacy Litten

January 14th, 2022

Lacy Litten
Teixeira Farms, Santa Maria, Calif.

Lacy initially started her career in agriculture as a human resources manager. Hungry to learn more about the industry, she quickly added on responsibilities in safety and food safety, and eventually was selected to head up food safety at Innovative Produce. Today, she serves as a “jack of all trades” at Teixeira Farms, bringing new and groundbreaking ideas to improve efficiencies in the cooler and on the farm.

Lacy has formed a deep passion for the industry throughout the years and continually strives to demonstrate the importance of agriculture as No. 1 economic driver in California and re-connect consumers to the dedicated farmers that grow their food. Using her degree in mass communication and media studies, she launched “Facts from Farmers”—a digital initiative that showcases all the good farmers do beyond providing nutritious foods.

In addition to her role at Teixeira Farms, Lacy is also active in local community and agricultural organizations including Leadership Santa Maria Valley, Coalition of Labor and Agricultural Businesses, Santa Maria Pioneer Association and the Allan Hancock College Ag Advisory Committee.

She is also an advocate for the advancement of women in agriculture and previously served as the president of California Women for Agriculture (Santa Maria Chapter), founded Good Ol’ Girls Club and signed on as an early ambassador of the WG Women Program.

 

Journey with Lacy through the images below (see print version of this issue) as she shares a little bit more about her life.

“The WG Women Program provided a safe and supportive place to connect with women on personal and professional levels—women who understand the difficulty and importance of balancing our personal and professional lives in a male-dominated and demanding industry. Establishing relationships with these women whom I respect and admire has been one of the greatest rewards.”

“I’m happy to carry on the tradition of hunting in my family—just like my dad, grandpa and great-grandpa. Here, my dad and I are in New Zealand, which provided a once-in-a-lifetime bucket list-worthy hunting experience.”

“If I ever end up competing in any type of rodeo event, it will be because of my horse, Kali. She loves working cows and will bend around a barrel without slowing down. A competitive spirit is definitely bred into her.”

“Agriculture provides more legs for communities to stand on besides just gross value and employment. We need to educate people on those, which is why I started the Facts from Farmers web and social media sites.”

“I’m so grateful for my experience in United Fresh’s Produce Industry Leadership Program (Class 24). It fueled my passion for leadership, inspiring me to pursue a Masters in Organizational Leadership.”

“I enjoy speaking with legislators and advocating for agriculture. People underestimate how important it is to build relationships with the ones elected to serve us.”

Lacy is among the first women to complete WG Women, a leadership program that provides pathways for women to achieve the highest levels of leadership within the agriculture industry.

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2022 WG Chairman Albert Keck on the Urgent Need to Tell Ag’s Story “We Matter”

January 14th, 2022

By Ann Donahue

There is—perpetually, it seems—an extensive menu of issues that face the agriculture industry. There are problems that can be ordered up at breakfast, lunch, dinner, and even for a midnight snack when sleep doesn’t come easy: water, labor, regulations, immigration, pesticides, shipping, transportation, COVID. And then maybe you can have something like climate change for dessert?

For Albert Keck, the newly-appointed 2022 Western Growers Chairman of the Board of Directors, a major concern of ag can’t be chewed over, and can be summed up in two words.

White noise.

Keck, the President of Hadley Date Gardens, Inc. in Thermal, Calif., and a third-generation farmer, is concerned that the laundry list of issues that have faced ag for decades is receding into the background, becoming an ominous perpetual hum that accompanies every business decision but never actually gets silenced.

It’s time, Keck said, for that to change.

“It’s like, what’s new in the last 20 years?” Keck asked. “Labor and water are never-ending. They’ve always been there. It’s bad because it seems like they are becoming white noise. But coming out of this COVID time in our country, we’re starting to realize how vulnerable we all are in our industry and our individual businesses. All of our jobs are kind of in this precarious position where if you don’t get a truckload of a key component in, you can’t get a harvest out the door. That’s interesting, because we used to take that for granted, and now I think people are starting to realize just how critical that is to our existence.”

The white noise that existed up to and through the pandemic needs to become more of a progressive drumbeat, one that those in the agriculture industry can follow to unite and rally into creating concrete, real-world solutions. “Yeah, I guess we always have a self-centered view of life, but it certainly seems like things are really bad right now,” Keck said. “But I’m confident we will rise to meet those challenges and continue the fight. I’m looking forward to my time in the hot seat.”

It’s a response born of optimism and motivation that comes from Keck’s years at the forefront of the business. A lifelong native of the Coachella Valley, Keck is Chairman of the California Date Administrative Committee and the California Date Commission. He was elected to the Western Growers board in 2015, and previously served as Senior Vice Chairman. Outgoing Western Growers Chairman Ryan Talley passed the gavel to Keck during the Western Growers Annual Meeting in November 2021 at the Fairmont Grand Del Mar in San Diego.

“Our industry is grappling with issues and challenges more daunting than ever, and it seems the perfect time for a happy warrior to step into the role of Chairman of the Western Growers Board of Directors,” said Western Growers President and CEO Dave Puglia. “Albert Keck is indeed a happy warrior, always looking to get after the toughest industry issues with a limitless supply of creative energy and imagination. I look forward to working with him to press forward against, or around, the obstacles confronting our members.”

“I know it’ll be a lot of work, but one thing I think is that all of us who are on the Board—especially once we get into a slot on the Executive Committee—there’s no lack of passion for the cause,” Keck said. “We are pumped up. The more time I spend at Western Growers with all the people there, our leaders and our staff, the more impressed I am and the more grateful I am for what they are doing. I know I’m not alone. I occupy that Chair, but it really is the entire Board and the leadership at Western Growers that is at work. I am excited about that, and I’m looking forward to being in the position to participate in a much more focused and intensive level even than I have in the past few years.”

Besides Keck, the other newly-installed members of the 2022 Western Growers Executive Committee are: Puglia; Senior Vice Chairman Stuart Woolf, President and CEO of Woolf Farming & Processing; Vice Chairman Rob Yraceburu, President of Wonderful Orchards; Treasurer Neill Callis, General Manager of Turlock Fruit Company; Executive Secretary Don Cameron, Vice President of Terranova Ranch; Talley, in his role as Past Chairman and Ron Ratto, President of Ratto Bros. in his role as Past Past Chairman.

“I have been fortunate beyond words to serve my first two years in this position alongside Ryan Talley, who led us as Chairman through a historic pandemic with calm confidence and wise counsel,” Puglia said. “As the only person to serve two years as WG’s Chairman, Ryan has given far more time and effort for the greater good than could be anticipated. We are enormously grateful to him and to his family.”

“It’s certainly daunting to assume the Chairmanship of Western Growers,” Keck said. “The litany of people that have gone before me—it’s just crazy.”

Keck hopes that as we evolve from the frantic pandemic stage of COVID to a managed endemic stage, we can create a new productive reality. “We’ve been in this surreal spin cycle for going on two years. It’s nice to think we’re coming out of this malaise that we’re in. That’s our hope, but we’ve had these false starts plenty this past year, right?” he said. “I refuse to accept this new normal as the new reality—no, it’s not. It’s still surreal and dystopic. It’s not our new normal. It’s messed up, and we are desperately needing to get out of it. That being said, the challenges we face are no less than what they’ve always been.”

The key to that, he said, is being clear, concise, and forthright in spreading the message to the public about the real-world needs of the grower and shipper community. “I think we have a good story to tell, and I think people are becoming much more aware of the essentials in their lives,” Keck said. “I think the opportunities that we’re going to have through these challenges are something we really need to key into in our messaging. I think it will open some doors to a lot of real good discussions, and, hopefully, policies that help ensure our future.”

Counterintuitively, it may just be that the horrors and sadness of the COVID crisis provided a turning point towards good. For the first time, Americans became aware of the complexities involved in getting food to the table and commodities on shelves.

“I think we’re supplying them with an essential need in food, and I think there is a huge opportunity there that is going to elevate our message that we matter,” he said. “We are a key part of everyone’s lives, and there are a lot of vulnerabilities in the supply chain that can affect everyone here in our country. There’s going to be some interesting things that come from that, and that may be a shifting of our awareness as a society and as a culture. I think Western Growers is in a good position to capitalize on that.”

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President’s Notes: The Case for Optimism

January 14th, 2022

By Dave Puglia, President & CEO

How do we keep our spirits up in times like this? How does one find reasons for optimism when so much is going wrong?

Over the course of my nearly 17 years at Western Growers, I have learned that being around farmers long enough will temper even the most cynical minds, and as someone who has spent decades working in politics it is fair to say that I am especially vulnerable to bouts with cynicism.

But as we embark on a new year and who-knows-what-crap the world will throw at us in 2022, I am optimistic.

Through all the political, legal and industry challenges we confronted together in 2021, our industry persevered thanks to the common and defining characteristics of the people in it: integrity, honesty, morality, sacrifice, charity.

At a time in which government actions and policies directed toward the agriculture industry are adversarial beyond any historic comparison, the men and women of the Western U.S. fresh produce industry keep finding ways to do right and to do better than anywhere else. That can’t be the work of pessimists; only an optimist can get out of bed every day, knowing the nonsensical and expensive headaches that await that only detract from growing healthy food.

As advocates for Western Growers members, that unacceptable reality drives me and everyone on the WG team every day. We must keep advocating in the halls of governments, and fighting for our interests in political campaigns, to restore balance and common sense in public policy. The successes are too infrequent, yet the people of this industry rise every day with an optimism that defies the Powers That Be.

What is the source of this optimism? How does it persist?

In 2021, I spent a good amount of time on the road, visiting longtime WG members who provide the greatest support to our association. I sought out members who do not sit on the WG Board and thus have less interaction with the WG team. It is an understatement to say that I was inspired and energized by their confidence, faith, and determination in the face of so many troubles.

An especially striking moment occurred during a visit with Joe Colace of Five Crowns Marketing in Brawley. Joe has been off the WG Board for many years now, so it was wonderful to catch up. At one point as we compared notes on the never-ending attacks on our industry by the California Legislature and the state’s regulatory agencies, I said something about how sad it is that so many people in the industry are looking to other states and countries to expand and invest. Right on cue, Joe replied that Five Crowns was putting the finishing touches on a large new cooling facility in…California!

“Why the (bleep) would you do that?” I asked. Joe confidently smiled and said that he and his team have such strong partners throughout the state, they knew they could make it work. In so many words, Joe said that through hard work, excellence in all they do, and a commitment to the highest business values and ethics, they could grow their business—even in California.

That was not what I was expecting to hear.

Then, as if to bookend the year, in December I moderated a panel discussion at the Organic Grower Summit in Monterey, featuring three “next generation” organic leaders: Keith Barnard (Mission Produce, Oxnard, Calif.); Bianca Kaprielian (Fruit World, Reedley, Calif.); and Michael Valpredo (Country Sweet Produce, Bakersfield, Calif.). All three grew up in farm families; two were urged by their fathers not to stay in the business. All three came of age, professionally, just as California’s public policy apparatus careened further and further away from common sense. Yet two of them left their initial careers outside of ag to return to the farm business, the third stayed in the family business, and all three have succeeded in launching new businesses or growing existing ones.

I asked whether they would encourage the next generation to work in this industry and they lit up with enthusiasm about the healthy food they provide through incredibly hard work. Bianca advised the next generation: “Don’t be jaded…For all the challenges we experience, there’s innovation to combat that, and there’s so much opportunity.”

An iconic leader of our industry invests in a major new facility in California. Younger professionals with many career options double down on an industry and a place they all describe as challenging and frustrating, but also exciting and rewarding.

Winston Churchill remarked, “For myself, I am an optimist—it does not seem to be much use being anything else.” That’s certainly practical, but I still think there is an individual choice to be made. For the 400-plus people who chose Western Growers as their employer, our members fuel our optimism and energize the hard work we undertake.

Here’s to a new year of challenges and opportunities. Cynicism be damned.

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Update from the Center

January 14th, 2022

Five years ago, Western Growers launched its Center for Innovation and Technology (WGCIT), housed in the Taylor Farms building in downtown Salinas. WGCIT brings together the ag industry and firms operating in the technology space to actively work on some of agriculture’s most vexing problems.

Below is an update from some of the startups housed in the WGCIT:

Agtools

Agtools provided University of Arizona Research Project and Fresh Produce Association of America the first phase of several datasets for a study on bell peppers and cucumbers to evaluate and understand market trends as they relate to competition between various domestic and international growing regions. Also, Agtools was invited to present public comments under the Federal Trade Commission Act on how supply chain issues are affecting competition in consumer goods markets with retailers, wholesalers, consumer goods suppliers and others. To read Agtools comments and recommendations for a worldwide USA leadership, visit www.agtechtools.com, go to section “Legislative.” The team is busy preparing a platform to deploy data services to farmers across the Americas, including the Caribbean, with the largest telecommunications provider in the hemisphere.

Boost Biomes

Boost Biomes delivers resilient microbial solutions that offer more robust performance, last longer and prevent the spread of pathogens. Based on a proprietary technology to understand and leverage the interactions between soil microbes, Boost develops high performance microbiome products sourced from the native biodiversity of relevant natural environments. The company takes biologicals to the next level: ecology.

Our first product is a biofungicide that prevents diseases like powdery mildew, downy mildew and botrytis, and will come to market late in 2022. To learn about grower trials for the 2022 season, please email [email protected].

Burro

Burro was recently recognized as a 2022 World Ag Expo “Top-10 New Product Winner.” Come visit us at Booth GS6, just South of the Farm Credit Dairy Center, or reach out to [email protected] to see how you can bring Burro to your field in 2022.

As the 2021 season came to a close, Burro had 90 robots in table grape fields moving fruit 100-300 miles a day autonomously, six days a week. Instead of farmworkers walking several miles a day with a 250-pound wheelbarrow full of grapes in the heat, Burro allows workers to stand in the shade and pick/pack with a continuous flow of fruit out of the field. Burros are already transforming worker productivity with one Burro enabling six-plus people to harvest up to 48 percent more fruit per day for a less than two-month ROI.

Burros feature a novel and patent-pending approach called Pop Up Autonomy, which means they work immediately out of the box by enabling everyone in a working environment to become an operator. They do not require a centralized control or installation of burdensome infrastructure. Instead, the robots use computer vision and AI to learn on the fly and to navigate autonomously from A to B while carrying various payloads.

Ganaz

Ganaz will officially announce in mid-January its new added feature to its People Management Platform, the Ganaz MasterCard Payroll Card significantly reducing or eliminating costs associated with traditional payroll and paper paychecks in agriculture and food processing industries.

Agriculture and food processing are among the last industries to move away from paying people with paper checks. Many workers are still unbanked, which makes it hard to implement 100 percent direct deposit. The cost of paper checks to workers and employers is staggering; industrywide, it adds up to more than $1 billion.

“Given how slim margins can be for growers and how hard it is to attract and retain labor in agriculture, keeping that wealth in the pockets of growers and workers is critical,” said Hannah Freeman, Co-Founder and CEO at Ganaz.

GeoVisual Analytics

GeoVisual continues to build easy to adopt, low-cost specialty crop measurement and scheduling tools that help make decisions to save money and time. Built on a company-confidential basis, without the need for expensive changes to the existing IT systems, their work integrates into the way each group likes to operate. Using experience from boots on the ground, combined with ongoing research with NASA, USDA and collaborations with YCEDA and WG, GeoVisual specialists focus on what the biggest problems or opportunities a company faces. The firm is funded by family and friends, and notes that a user will always own its own confidential data.

HeavyConnect

HeavyConnect was announced as a winner in the FDA’s Traceability Challenge for their easy-to-adopt food safety management system. Company Founder & CEO Patrick Zelaya shared their enthusiasm for being a part of the FDA’s New Era of Food Safety Blueprint and working with producers of all sizes to simplify regulatory compliance.

In September, FDA announced the 12 winners of its New Era of Smarter Food Safety Low- or No-Cost Tech-Enabled Traceability Challenge, which was launched as part of the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010. There were 90 submissions.

HeavyConnect’s External Link Disclaimer provides cloud-based digital traceability and compliance documentation solutions, including an intuitive mobile app that allows producers to capture traceability data in the field and seamlessly share it across the supply chain.

Hummingbird Technologies

Hummingbird Technologies is hiring. Get in touch with [email protected] to find out more. Hummingbird is an artificial intelligence business that provides advanced crop analysis to its customers by using proprietary machine learning algorithms applied to remote sensing captured imagery. Hummingbird generates variable rate fertilizer applications to increase the uniformity of plant sizes across the field before peak nitrogen uptake. These applications are delivered through side-dressers and allow growers to reduce nitrogen usage by up to 70 percent while increasing yield by up to 10 percent. Hummingbird has been working with selected partners in California and Mexico over the past year and is expanding its trials network for 2022.

iFoodDS

iFoodDS continues to enhance its comprehensive food supply chain platform for food safety, traceability and quality management. iFoodDS announces the coming release of a new Shelf Life Monitoring solution. Available as a standalone solution or bundled with iFoodDS’ Quality Insights solution, Shelf Life will help identify, manage, monitor and measure fresh food degradation and variability to improve freshness and reduce waste. The iFoodDS solution helps you ensure the consistency of the freshness and shelf-life of the produce you sell, leading to increased sales and customer satisfaction.

iTradeNetwork

Q4 has been very busy! Four hundred iTrade customers are currently participating in the Beta Program for its next-generation trading platform to be released in early 2022, and iTrade has added 60 new buying organizations to the platform for growers and suppliers to trade with. Also, OrderMaestro—a new procurement solution for foodservice operators—was released, as well as new capabilities for label-less traceability, incident alerts, food safety event impact analysis and recall management, which help suppliers instantly assess their exposure during an event as well as visually confirm the locations of their products across the supply chain via a set of insights dashboards and maps.

NAÏO Technologies

Naïo Technologies is a winner of the 2022 World Ag Expo Top-10 New Product with its New Smart Autonomous Robot, which will be unveiled in Tulare, Calif. in February 2022. The robot offers a sustainable, serviceable and smart farming solution combining high-edge technology in robotics and AI. Naïo engineered a light electric and autonomous ag robot for sustainable reasons: no carbon emission, no chemical use. The autonomous high precision robot is dedicated to large-scale vegetable crops and is a sustainable alternative to the use of herbicides that respects soils, improves working conditions and collects data for smart farming. It can also carry any implement that growers are using at the back of the robot thanks to its three-point attachment. It’s Plug & Play!

Rantizo

Rantizo’s turnkey system for in-field drone applications has now received a significant boost in productivity due to the use of a larger drone (the T-30). For reference, the tank size on the newest offering is triple the size of what was being using previously. Larger tanks mean more productive and cost-effective options for crop protection applications. As the first company approved to operate the T-30 in the U.S., this means Rantizo’s nationwide network of contractors now have the option to add larger drones to their fleet to service growers.

Rantizo lists its value proposition as little-to-no crop damage when compared to conventional sprayers; major cost savings on inputs with spot-spraying capability; improved soil health due to no machinery-caused soil compaction; more versatility in application, less reliance on weather due to precise application; and an additional method of cover crop broadcast seeding.

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Voices of the Valley: Overview of Agriculture Opportunities in Brazil

January 19th, 2022
IRVINE, CALIF. (January 19, 2022) – 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, CEO of GreenVenus, SP Ventures Founding Partner and Managing Director Francisco Jardim discusses the opportunities – and challenges – of investing in agriculture in Brazil.

Brazil’s size and climate range allows for two to three harvests a year, a bounty that allows for tremendous crop production, Jardim says. But that increased output exists alongside increased pressures.

“Growers need more weapons in their arsenal, and this is more true than ever in a tropical agriculture ecosystem,” he says. “It’s Spring Break for pests. There’s more moisture, it’s hotter…there’s no freezing. It just grows, grows, grows.”

But Jardim warns that the lure of this robust production cycle must be tempered by an understanding of the local economy, human capital, infrastructure and supply chain conditions. Outside investors and companies need to do their homework and collaborate with locals, he says.

“I’m going to go out on a limb here and be a little bit controversial,” he says. “We’ve been seeing Israeli and North American companies trying to take a go at the market. These guys come with what we say in Portuguese very ‘high heels’ – very self-confident. And what usually happens after three to four years of several failures…is that these guys clearly were not successful and the local entrepreneurs developing local technology solutions tackling local problems are starting to win out.”

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

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.

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AZ Dept. of Agriculture Announces COVID Reimbursement Program

January 25th, 2022

Arizona Department of Agriculture’s Specialty Crop Block Grant Program recently announced the availability of funds for assistance with COVID-related expenses. Western Growers staff worked with the Department to streamline the application process and provide up to $2,500 in reimbursing for eligible expenses related to personal protective equipment, workplace safety and vaccination events.

The deadline to apply for reimbursement is September 30, 2022; however funds are available on a first come, first serve basis. Please CLICK HERE for program information, eligible applicants and eligible expenses.

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Fed OSHA Withdraws Vaccine-or Test Mandate for Large Employers

January 27th, 2022

The Federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced that it is withdrawing the Biden administration’s temporary COVID-19 vaccine-or-test requirement for large employers. The decision was made in light of the Supreme Court’s decision blocking the rule.

OSHA’S emergency temporary standard (ETS), issued Nov. 5, compelled companies with more than 100 workers to ensure their employees be vaccinated or tested weekly.  However, the Supreme Court ruled that OSHA does not have the power to “regulate public health more broadly,” and that “[r]equiring the vaccination of 84 million Americans, selected simply because they work for employers with more than 100 employees, certainly falls in the latter category.”

Even though OSHA’s withdrawal of the ETS became effective Jan. 26, the agency said it intends to issue a similar rule through regular notice and rulemaking. Such a move will surely be challenged in the courts, particularly in light of the Supreme Court’s opinion which said it was the purview of Congress, not the courts, to promulgate such measures. 

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