Arizona Advocacy: Why Arizona Policymakers Can Remain Nimble Amid a Dire Water Situation

July 21st, 2022

By Robert Medler, Arizona Government Affairs Manager

One Thousand Forty-Five. That is the elevation, in feet, of Lake Mead at the Hoover Dam (on the day I am writing this.) Lake Mead is 25 feet lower than it was on the same day in June 2021, and a staggering 44 feet lower than June 2020. Between now and the historical low point of the year on Lake Mead, the water elevation will drop another four to six feet based on data from the last five years. If you were wondering the last time Lake Mead was at this elevation, it was sometime in late 1937—when the lake was filling originally. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is suggesting a reduction in use of between 2 million and 4 million acre-feet within the lower Colorado River basin is needed.

Arizona is the only state in the Colorado Basin that is entirely located within the basin. Every drop of water in Arizona theoretically drains to the Colorado River. Our state has grown exponentially due to the advancement in technologies, and the ability to harness the resources of the mighty Colorado. As we thrive in Arizona, outsiders continue to question our economic vitality and viability, as well as the appropriateness of past policy decisions.

Depressing news with respect to water supply and availability is not new to our industry. The fresh produce industry in the southwest has survived the ebbs and flows of not only the Colorado River and other major water supplies, but also those of the media, politicians and the public. There is a change a coming though. And it is in Arizona.

With the FY23 state budget passed and signed, Arizona has made a landmark investment for water resources and infrastructure. In his State of the State address, Gov. Doug Ducey proposed a $1 billion investment towards water augmentation (read: desalination) and shovel-ready infrastructure projects throughout rural Arizona. The legislation took the entire legislative session and saw numerous iterations. In the end it was a bipartisan bill—only one dissenting vote in each chamber—that invests more than $1 billion over the next three years, re-establishes the Water Infrastructure Finance Authority as a separate state agency with a governing board and several committees to assist in reviewing applications for funding. The bill further authorizes WIFA to engage in public-private partnerships for water supply development projects, mostly through the newly established Long-Term Water Augmentation Fund to primarily fund projects to import water into Arizona.

Legislative action is not the only action occurring in Arizona. In May, the Department of Water resources and the Central Arizona Project held a joint briefing on Colorado River shortage preparations. Planned additional savings will leave approximately 812,000 AF in Lake Mead. Gila River Indian Tribes, Mohave Valley and Yuma Mesa Irrigation Districts, along with over 12 other municipal water districts, are working to create these combined savings. With Tier 2b shortage on the horizon, other partners have worked together to offset those impending cuts.

The drought in the Colorado River basin has garnered the full attention of Arizona policymakers and water professionals. Unlike other states within the basin, Arizona is finding ways to keep water in Lake Mead, and planning now for future cuts. There is more that can be done, some of which will require difficult conversations and even more difficult decisions. Yuma is world renowned for the irrigation efficiency practices employed, and as a result will continue to thrive for the near future. Over 40 years of water management practices have left Arizona with options, options that allow Arizona to be nimble when facing a potentially dire situation. As a result for the foreseeable future, Arizona’s fresh produce industry is on strong footing to continue to thrive and provide for not only the nation, but the world.

 

 

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Federal Advocacy: Pesticide Utilization—Feeling the Squeeze

July 21st, 2022

By Jonathan Sarager, Federal Government Affairs Director

Specialty crop growers face many pressures, not the least of which is the constant struggle to keep pests at bay. Whether producers utilize conventional or organic farming methods, they continue to require an effective set of tools including pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides to assist in the safe and effective production of the nutritious food we all need in our diet. But time is not on our side; existing tools are being pulled away and new alternatives are not getting here fast enough to provide a sustainable solution.

Most specialty crops are classified by the EPA as “minor use crops” because many are produced on less than 300,000 acres. Smaller acreage crops like ours often do not provide sufficient economic incentive for large chemical companies to bear the burden of the high costs associated with the development and registration of new products to assist growers with their battles against insects, weeds, and disease. As a result, there are far fewer affordable and effective crop inputs made available to specialty crop growers.

The concerns of a limited influx of new controls are compounded by the fact that existing products—often developed long ago for high acreage commodities and subsequently adapted for use in specialty crops—are being challenged for real or perceived effects on the environment or public health.

For decades, the EPA has failed to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service on pesticide registrations as required by the Endangered Species Act. As such, NGOs have filed and won ESA lawsuits which bring the whole system with respect to existing products into question and in recent cases, lawsuits have successfully postponed the use of newly registered pesticides after an already multiyear process. Foreign pressures on MRLs continue to elevate as well; ongoing issues surrounding MRL regulations and banning certain chemicals from the EU are well-documented and it is becoming a more global concern for exports.

We can often count on the USDA to aid in advocacy efforts, but with pesticides it’s different. In a recent amicus brief filed by the solicitor general of the Department of Justice for instance, it was argued that the Supreme Court should not review the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision that glyphosate, something that EPA has stated is not a carcinogen, be labeled as cancer causing. While being questioned before Congress last month, USDA Secretary Vilsack revealed he was not consulted on this issue by the DOJ.

Additionally, societal pressures reflected by downstream customer demands are now reflected in retailer buying patterns. Even without government action many retailers are questioning producers about the use of pesticides and pressure is mounting to limit or eliminate the use of certain chemistries (even those proven safe). All told, specialty crop growers with limited tools to begin with are losing them without a corresponding development of new alternatives.

This situation is increasingly untenable for growers and WG proposes a renewed collective attention to the issue before it turns into a full crisis. We must look for ways to preserve the limited resources we currently have while increasing the number of safe and efficacious tools to assist specialty crop growers in their battles against all pests. As growers, we have an increasingly important voice in this debate, and we need to share the stories that convey the necessity these inputs play in our ability to continue to provide an ample supply of nutritious food.

We are encouraging allied organizations to join in this effort as well and look to upcoming legislative activity to improve the environment for next generation crop inputs. We can make a variety of improvements, whether it’s through our participation in the Specialty Crop Farm Bill Alliance to include research funding in the Farm Bill reauthorization for accelerated work in alternatives for our industry, improved implantation of Integrated Pest Management systems, or cooperation with registrants on making improvements through the Pesticide Registration Improvement Act reauthorization. Beyond federal legislation, my colleagues within WG are working on solutions by facilitating advancements at the Western Growers Center for Innovation and Technology.

As we feel the squeeze on both sides from the removal of existing chemistries and the lack of adequate replacement innovations, we have had some great initial conversations with WG members on prioritization efforts. While research into new alternatives will take time, we do not have any assurances on the timing of removal of existing products. Given this uncertainty, we are pushing hard at both the federal and state levels, and with our innovation work to get prepared. We encourage you to engage with us to help drive these efforts in the most productive way forward.

 

 

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Agriculture & the Law: Viking River Cruises and Other Arbitration Case Law Updates

July 21st, 2022

By Jason Resnick, Senior Vice President and General Counsel & Teresa McQueen, Corporate Counsel

Several recent cases addressing various aspects of the right to arbitrate issue are making the news. These cases and their impact on the right to arbitrate are outlined below.

Viking River Cruises, Inc. v. Moriana (6/15/2022)

In an 8-1 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), which requires the enforcement of arbitration agreements, trumps the 2014 landmark California Supreme Court decision in Iskanian v. CLS Transp., which held that arbitration agreements purporting to waive the right to bring claims under California’s Labor Code Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) are unenforceable.

The Court basically said employers can compel “individual” claims under PAGA to arbitration, and with the “individual” PAGA claims compelled to arbitration, a court must dismiss the “non-individual” PAGA claims for lack of standing. The court left open the door for the courts or the legislature to amend PAGA so that employees could have standing to bring collective actions in court, and side-step arbitration agreements. We know California legislators and plaintiffs’ attorneys are already scheming to get around Viking River.

The Viking River case stems from a lawsuit brought by plaintiff Moriana, a former sales representative for Viking River Cruises, who filed a PAGA claim, seeking to recover penalties for an alleged violation of wage and hour law against her, and on behalf of all other allegedly aggrieved employees based on violations she herself did not suffer. Viking River Cruises argued the claims were subject to individualized arbitration under the arbitration agreement Moriana had signed as a condition of her employment. Relying on Iskanian, the lower state courts held such waivers are unenforceable in PAGA cases, precedent which the U.S. Supreme Court has now repudiated.

 

Morgan v. Sundance, Inc. (5/23/2022)

The U.S. Supreme Court recently held that courts may not make up a new procedural rule based on the Federal Arbitration Act’s (FAA) “policy favoring arbitration.”

Plaintiff Morgan was an hourly employee working at a Taco Bell franchise (Sundance) who signed an agreement to arbitrate when she was hired. Despite having signed an arbitration agreement, Morgan later filed a nationwide collective action alleging violations of federal overtime laws. Sundance filed a motion to dismiss the complaint in court and participated in mediation. Eight months later (after mediation efforts failed), Sundance moved to stay the litigation and compel Morgan into arbitration. Morgan then claimed that Sundance had waived its right to compel arbitration on the grounds it has spent the past eight months acting inconsistently with its agreement to arbitrate. Relying on past precedents, Sundance argued that arbitration should be ordered as its delay in compelling arbitration had not prejudiced Morgan in her litigation efforts.

In response, the Court held the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeal erred in conditioning a waiver of the right to arbitrate on a showing of prejudice. A showing of prejudice is the type of arbitration-specific rule prohibited by the FAA. Among other things, the FAA seeks to assure arbitration contracts are treated—under the law—like all other contracts, and not in a way that favors arbitration.

The Court’s ruling on this essentially technical issue could have far-reaching implications on the state of arbitration depending on how the lower court rules on remand. Long term, the impact of this ruling could see an increase in the number of cases allowed to remain in civil court. A refocusing of the criteria for determining whether a party has waived its right to compel arbitration to a determination of inconsistency on the part of employers—without more—could make it easier for plaintiffs to keep claims out of arbitration.

 

Trinity v. Life Insurance Company of North America (5/17/2022)

This California Court of Appeal case reviews the sufficiency of electronically acknowledged arbitration agreements as well as procedural and substantive unconscionability.

Employees at Life Insurance Company of North America (LINA) were required to access the company’s handbook—which included the company’s arbitration provisions—electronically to review and accept both the handbook and the company’s arbitration policy. Under LINA’s processes for review and acceptance, once an employee electronically acknowledged the handbook—by clicking a box next to an acknowledgment statement and then clicking “done”—LINA’s system would then automatically generate and send to the employee a confirmatory email evidencing the acknowledgment.

The question of whether the parties had entered into an arbitration agreement centered around Trinity’s testimony that she had never seen or agreed to the arbitration agreement, nor would she have ever accepted the position if she knew agreeing to arbitration was a condition of employment. In rebuttal, LINA claimed its confirmatory email evidenced Trinity’s review and acceptance. The problem LINA faced was that it could not produce a copy of the confirming email nor account for how it was generated, stored or maintained.

Absent any tangible evidence to contradict Trinity’s testimony, the court shifted its focus to the credibility of the witnesses (i.e., Trinity and LINA’s Employee Relations Managing Director) and agreed to Trinity’s request for an evidentiary hearing. After listening to testimony from both parties, the court determined that LINA had failed to prove Trinity agreed to the arbitration provision in the employee handbook. The Court gave significant weight to the fact that despite LINA’s confidence an automatic email was generated and sent to Trinity, it could not produce the email nor confirm whether the email even existed.

Ultimately, the party seeking arbitration has the burden of proving (by a preponderance of the evidence) that an agreement to arbitrate exists. First and foremost, this means producing a written agreement. Absent the production of a written agreement, evidence of sufficient weight and character must be presented such that the court could not reasonably reject it. LINA failed on both accounts.

 

Lessons Learned

Each of these decisions provides some real-life lessons for employers who utilize arbitration agreements. In light of these cases, employers should consider the following:

•   California employers should review and, if needed, revise their arbitration agreements to ensure they do not carve out representative PAGA claims and will otherwise withstand legal scrutiny.

•   Arbitration agreements should always be considered a “standalone” document signed and dated by both parties, along with an internal code identifying which version of the company’s arbitration agreement the employee is signing.

•   As electronic signature options become more common in the workplace, employers need to make sure they understand how the electronic signing system works, how party signatures are recorded and how finalized documents are distributed and to whom.

•   If signing the agreement is voluntary, the employer should have the means to easily determine who has—and who has not—signed the agreement.

•   Technology can change rapidly in the workplace, so it is important that system audits are regularly performed to ensure accessibility of even the company’s oldest arbitration agreements.

 

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Agtech Updates

July 21st, 2022

Below are a few more agtech updates from companies that have chosen to advertise in this special “Agtech” edition of Western Grower & Shipper.

DPG Continuous Fertigation is a paradigm shift in the way nutrients are applied to crops. DPG Continuous Fertigation, also known as The White Box, is an autonomous, computer-controlled series of fertilizer pumps capable of feeding up to 12 different nutrients simultaneously. Using a computer mainframe and Deerpoint’s proprietary formulations, nutrients are applied at precise levels, only giving crops what they need, when they need it. No wasted fertilizer means no wasted investment. The White Box can be programmed to manage endless combinations to be applied and adjusted throughout the growing season. Fertilizer inputs can often be reduced while still maintaining excellent yields and lowering the total cost per acre to growers. Growers remain a part of the process 24/7 via the online Grower Portal. The Grower Portal offers total transparency, providing access to tank levels, water flow rates, nutrient goals, pH levels, and fertilizer feed rates. The White Box is a turnkey system requiring no additional cost to the grower—in fact, it reduces labor costs because Deerpoint manages the entire process. The White Box is remotely operated by DPG’s highly skilled field technicians. A team of grower advisors, with a state-of-the-art, on-site laboratory will continually analyze soil and plant tissue samples to ensure optimum crop health and production.

 

IntelliCulture provides equipment management software for farms. By installing plug and play GPS devices into farm machinery, the company then provides insights into spray coverage, equipment health and labor management. ShopView is the machine management view, which alerts the user of machine issues and automates maintenance planning, minimizing and preventing downtime in the fleet. CropView is to keep track of jobs on the farm and digitizes task planning and warns of overdue or inefficient work, ensuring optimized use of labor and proper spray coverage. CabView is a mobile app that operators use to prevent pest and mildew outbreaks on the vineyard through real-time spray visualization and alerting. Through these three domains, IntelliCulture digitizes and automates the management process for farms in a simple, elegant fashion.

 

LahakX provides agricultural spraying as a service. Located in Salinas, Calif., the company offers growers the ability to spray their crops at the push of a button. Growers and applicators deploy a self-flying fleet of spraying drones that makes crop protection sustainable, precise, safe and affordable. The company delivers what it calls “a complete, ready-to-go, spraying solution based on our proprietary technology.” An autonomous swarm of drones can cover a farm fast and precise, or “spot spray” zones in the farm can be targeted to greatly reduce chemical use. The company touts its servicer as reducing labor, operational and service costs while boosting productivity and safety.

 

Smart Apply Intelligent Spray Control System is designed to counter rising costs with precision. With rising production costs weighing heavily on growers’ minds, agtech company Smart Apply is attempting to bring significant relief to a growing number of orchards and vineyards around the world. Drawn by the system’s ability to reduce chemical and water usage by an average of 50 percent per season, Smart Apply, previously marketed under the name Smart Guided, held live demonstrations this spring, and reports that it connected with new dealers and experienced strong sales. In addition to cost savings, Smart Apply also supports growers’ sustainability initiatives. Because chemicals are applied to each tree or vine with precision, drift and excess chemical runoff are virtually non-issues, a major win for the environment. According to CEO Jerry Johnson, Smart Apply has more than doubled its dealer network from seven to 19 with representation in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Chile, and Peru. Sales of the Smart Apply Intelligent Spray Control System, which is sold as a kit that is compatible with most air blast sprayers, doubled in 2021. Sales are on track to double again this year.

 

Soiltech Wireless is a grower-driven company, developing solutions to address farmers’ most pressing operational needs. At its core, the wireless soil moisture, temperature and humidity sensor can serve many purposes for a wide variety of crop types. In addition to measuring soil moisture, temperature and humidity, the sensor incorporates an early disease indication alert system, forward-looking weather forecasting, and chill hours and GDD calculators, which provide field insights into different crop stages. All these data insights are supported through Soiltech’s proprietary software platform, which enables access to real-time insights and allows for seamless collaboration among several stakeholders (growers, consultants, PCAs, and processors) on items, including field notation and chemical, irrigation, and nutrition tracking.

 

Founded in 2014, Tule helps growers make irrigation decisions. Tule combines agronomic expertise with cutting-edge technology to answer growers’ critical crop water stress and irrigation questions. With their sensor product, Tule provides growers with crop water use measurements, crop water stress information, applied irrigation monitoring and irrigation recommendations. With its new A.I. product, Tule Vision, growers take pictures of their vines and get the midday leaf water potential, replacing the need for the pressure chamber in vineyards. As an organization, Tule is dedicated to helping growers take advantage of funding through SWEEP grants to save water and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

 

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Update From the WGCIT

July 21st, 2022

AGNote: Field splitting is a useful feature for vegetable growers. Since AgNote joined Western Growers in early 2022, it has had an opportunity to learn more about farm management software requirements for vegetable growers. One of the company’s learnings is it has discovered that vegetable growers often plant multiple crops and varieties in the same field. Recently, AgNote added a Produce Crop management area in the AgNote offering so that farmers can easily add multiple crops or varieties in one field. In addition, the Produce Crop management area has been designed to provide simple yet immensely powerful mapping. On the field map users can add notes and draw shapes before sharing the map.

 

Agtools

Agtools was chosen as one of the five winners in the Orange Silicon Valley Decarbonization Challenge project, which is committed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to reach the goal of Net Zero Carbon by 2040. Agtools was chosen based on its technology and readiness for commercial engagement and tool developed by Clean Energy Ventures. The Agtools team believes that optimizing human decisions in the food supply chain through the sustainability suite of data widgets avoids unnecessary carbon emissions from farm to distribution centers. Recently, company officials traveled to Paris to present to its corporate partners. It also presented during the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles during the panel discussion titled Women in Technology for the Global Trade and Impact on Supply Chains.

 

altumAI

altumAI and its insurance operation, futureWork Insurance (in partnership with Tangram), is now operational with its dedicated Workers’ Compensation Agriculture program. With Western Growers Insurance Services as a key distributor, the company is now quoting and binding workers’ compensation policies with competitive rates and inclusive of altumAI’s loss-control technology. According to the company, its easy-to-use technology allows workers and supervisors to use the mobile phone as a digital PPE/safety device to get personalized ergonomic coaching, environmental (heat, air quality) safety advice and training. Managers and supervisors can use the altumAI app and web-dashboard to identify workers and teams facing higher workplace risks, coach and train, prioritize loss control and worksite interventions. The company claims that users benefit by utilizing a digital tool that enables and reinforces a strong safety culture, helps proactively reduce the severity and frequency of safety related incidents, and improves productivity and compliance.

 

Boost Biomes

Boost Biomes’ first product is a biofungicide that prevents diseases like powdery mildew, downy mildew and botrytis. The team is closely tracking the progress of more than 50 trials in the U.S. this season. These trials are helping to confirm win-rates and product positioning for a 2023 market launch. To learn about grower trials (especially in grapes) for the coming season, please email [email protected]. Boost Biomes develops high-performance microbiome products sourced from the native biodiversity of relevant natural environments. Its technology takes biologicals to the next level: ecology. The Boost platform overcomes traditional limitations of microbial and biological crop inputs.

 

Carbon Robotics

Carbon Robotics recently opened its first two LaserWeeder support hubs in Salinas and Bakersfield, near its Central Coast and Central Valley customers. The Central Coast region staff includes Territory Sales Manger Tim Mahoney, Senior Product Manager Ben Palone, Director of Farm Implementation Jaime Eltit, Field Demo Engineer Stanley Smith, Operations Manager Baha Sadduk, and Field Service Technician Jason Cameron. The Central Valley team features Field Demo Engineer Mason Fontes and Field Service Technician Jeff Destefani. The company reports that it is rapidly expanding implementation, support, and sales staff to meet accelerating demand across America’s growing regions. Carbon Robotics publicly launched its 20 ft.-wide LaserWeeder implement at the World Ag Expo in February 2022, quickly selling out of 2022 models. The team is currently scaling manufacturing, delivering 2022 models to customers, and wrapping up pre-orders for 2023 delivery.

 

Ganaz

For the past five years, Ganaz has been hard at work at becoming the most accessible people management platform in the agriculture and food processing industries. The company believes it has come up with some exciting solutions—both for farmworkers and their employers—and has submitted a testimonial as proof of its performance. Employer Above The Dirt turned to Ganaz for their onboarding and payroll management needs. Sheila Waulters, AP Manager for Above the Dirt, described their problem with their old system. “I think the biggest issue we’re having with our current payroll pay card is just that it also is a very manual process.” One of the main draws of Ganaz’ platform was its ability to simplify people management in agriculture through software, saving employers time, money and energy. Among other features, it provides paperless onboarding and employee communication. “What drew us to Ganaz was the speed of the development of onboarding,” she said. “It was an easy process for us to do our onboarding. It was quick, it was simple, and Ganaz has been great to work with; very responsive in their customer support, and those are the main reasons that we went with them.”

 

Inteligistics

Inteligistics reports that its InteliCool solution improves vacuum precooling efficiency by 30 percent, noting that WGCIT staff recently assisted Inteligistics in the evaluation of the system at Fresh Del Monte facilities in Salinas, Calif., and Yuma, Ariz. The results were significant reductions in cooling cycle time, electric power savings, and reduced CO2 emissions helping mitigate climate change, along with the overall efficiency improvement. Post-harvest cooling is a standard practice, but Intelistics reports that it is an inexact science that requires significant time and cost to execute effectively. It claims that its patented InteliCool system continuously monitors product core temperatures throughout the cooling tube. Integrated control process using proprietary algorithms ends the cooling cycle the moment target core temperatures are reached, eliminating excess cooling time. InteliCool technology combines wireless product core temperature sensors and secure cloud-based servers for continuous visibility and analysis using Inteligistics proprietary software. Operators can monitor the status in real-time, and when the core target temperature is reached, commands are sent back to the cooling tube control system to execute cycle completion. Walt Duflock, Vice President of Innovation at Western Growers Association said, “This thorough evaluation of InteliCool is our first in-depth case study and is proof-of-concept of the value WGCIT brings to the industry.”

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Innovation: More Talk Between Startups and Growers Needed: Tech Should Do the Listening

July 21st, 2022

By Walt Duflock, Vice President of Innovation

The 2022 Automated Technology Field Day was held in June at the Hartnell East Campus in Salinas, Calif. There was a great crowd with over 150 attendees and a great mix of growers, startups, and equipment dealers were in the audience. It was probably the largest agtech field demo day for startups since the Forbes AgTech demo day in 2019.

I talked to growers that were asking some in-depth questions to the startups about business models, service areas and pricing. I also talked to startups that were able to move conversations forward and start some new ones. In short, the event did what it should do: it gave growers and startups a chance to engage and get conversations turned into valid opportunities…or not. Conversations at and leading up to the event provide some clarity around the state of the market for agtech automation:

1.  There is continued fundraising momentum in the automation space. Recent fundraising includes $45 million for FarmWise, $27 million for Carbon Robotics, $10.9 million for Burro, and $20 million for Tortuga. This indicates that startups are making progress toward targets set by investors and are able to secure additional funds that are needed to scale. This is good because it indicates that startups and investors are learning to set expectations that can lead to future fundraising success for startups that execute well.

2.  Overall, it is still very early in automation. As part of the Harvest Automation Report, we talked to more than 50 automation startups and found that 75 percent do not have any venture capital raised and the other 25 percent only have gone through an A or B round. Traditionally, the first group is still in product design and build mode and not ready for market, and the second has built a version 1.0 product and is just starting to get into market and/or accelerate sales and marketing efforts. Serious scale rarely starts before C round funds are raised. There’s a long way to go to get automation solutions tested and scaled.

3.  We need more events like the Hartnell event. Talking to growers and startups at and since the event, it is clear that the in-person event gets both sides focused on the topic at hand: What needs to happen to get automation solutions into field trials and/or sales motion? The agtech industry should work to deliver more of these events and do it at scale. Sales pipelines are the lifeblood of any startup, and these events can help build pipelines and start or improve relationships. Luckily, there are multiple events coming up that can help, including these two excellent opportunities: (1) FIRA USA – October 18-20 in Fresno, Calif., which is focused on specialty crop automation solutions; and (2) World Ag Expo – February 8-10 in Tulare, Calif.

 

The promise of agtech automation solutions is growing and the need for them is accelerating. Given the decreasing availability of farm labor, the increasing usage of H-2A labor for immigrant workers (which pushes costs for labor higher but makes them more predictable), and the overall cost of labor of all sources from regulation (minimum wage, overtime, break rules, and adverse wage regulations), the need for more automation solutions in agriculture has never been more urgent.

Growers and startups can see the promise and the need but based on the reality that few automation startups have raised a C round, there is still a lot to be done. Growers are still not seeing enough solutions to address the labor shortage and solve the economics of it. Growers need to be open to more field trials and willing to have candid conversations with startups that have potential solutions that are not ready for market. Startups need to be open to these discussions and walk away when the grower feedback indicates a lack of market fit. Conversations that turn into pushy sales pitches make the space harder for everyone. As always, startups need to really listen to the customer to hear the feedback being delivered. If growers give candid feedback and startups can listen and make product changes, the entire space can move forward more quickly.

The biggest reminder from Hartnell—it’s not enough for automation solutions to just complete the task (i.e. harvest the crop or weed the field). The solution has to do the task at economics that work for the grower (i.e. weeding robots that weed perfectly but cost $600/acre will never get a field trial) and ideally leave economics in play for a potential sales partner like an equipment dealer. It’s the job of the startups to understand and develop product that meets economics demanded by growers, including the preferred buying metric ($x/acre or $x/yield metric) and current spend to complete the task. Both of these can vary by grower.

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Agtech is Already Here

July 21st, 2022

There are many very cool high-tech ideas bouncing around the specialty crop industry, moving forward at various levels of speed, jumping one hurdle after the next. But there are also success stories and real agtech being utilized on the farm. Below are two companies that are well past concept development and are offering equipment that materially reduces the need for labor.

Bear Flag Robotics could well be the poster child for agtech startups. Co-Founders Aubrey Donnellan and Igino Cafiero started the company in 2017 in Silicon Valley, focusing on the development of autonomous farming tractors that are compatible with existing farm machinery. The emphasis was on retrofitting existing tractors with patented artificial intelligence technology to increase their efficiency and productivity. They soon joined a startup accelerator program and received seed money. They also became a resident of the Western Growers Center for Innovation & Technology. In 2018, Bear Flag partnered with a venture capital company and over the next couple of years received significant funding to move its concept forward. They first put an autonomous tractor in the field in 2018 and launched a commercial version of their technology in late 2019. By 2021, they were involved directly with many growers, including partnering with Church Brothers. Along the way, Bear Flag Robotics began working with John Deere as part of its Startup Collaborator program. The collaboration was a success, and the Bear Flag Robotics was acquired by John Deere about a year ago. The agreement has been valued at $250 million with Bear Flag staff still in place and running the operation, albeit with significant help from John Deere.

Cafiero said the agreement has resulted in a significant acceleration of the development and implementation of its farm automation. He recently told WG&S that while Bear Flag Robotics has successfully launched and been acquired, he has learned a lot in the process and would do things a bit differently if he had it to do all over again.

In creating an autonomous tractor, Bear Flag concentrated on tillage, reasoning that the operation was a time-consuming process that could be automated, saving time and money. The startup had a goal to deliver value to the end user as quickly as possible. Bear Flag had this philosophy and executed it well, but Cafiero said the move to the field was still too slow.

Farmers, he said, are not looking for perfection. They are looking for something that works. “My advice is to get out into the field with what you have as quickly as you can and work with farmers as soon as you can.”

He explained that the trap some startups fall into is that they gather a lot of smart people in a garage, and they develop and build a high tech piece of equipment that’s really cool but doesn’t necessarily do what the farmer needs it to do. “When we started Bear Flag, we were a robotics company trying to create an autonomous tractor to deliver to the farm community. Now we are an ag farming company trying to deliver value to the farmer through the use of robotics. That’s not just semantics. It’s a big difference.”

Cafiero said the great thing about farmers is that they are not looking for perfection, they are looking for value. If you can provide something that does the job better, they will quickly embrace your technology. “They are very quick to adopt new technology if it has value,” he said.

At its core, the Bear Flag concept was pretty simple: create an autonomous tractor that could do a job in a more efficient way. Cafiero said tillage is an operation every farmer employs. Bear Flag has now put real equipment in the field that has done tens of thousands—even hundreds of thousands—of passes without a driver. That is clearly creating value.

And Cafiero said the beauty of the high-tech equipment on the tractor is that those passes are also generating a mountain of data. “The more passes we make, the more that data becomes meaningful.”

For example, he said the passes are basically mapping every field and a farmer can quickly see where he has compaction. That data, he said, can be used to work those areas and increase yield and productivity. But Cafiero was quick to add that “data for data’s sake is useless.” It has to actually do something that benefits the farmer.

The company is not resting on its laurels, and, in fact, Cafiero said the acquisition by John Deere has allowed the firm to speed up development on other ag technology. The common thread is that the company is focused on “developing the best-in-class technology for autonomous agricultural equipment.” Its goal is to reduce the need for labor in terms of “mundane tasks” and free them up for more revenue-generating operations.

Speaking of the ag space, Cafiero said farmers are not trend chasers, and in any endeavor, there will be those early adopters and those that trail behind waiting for the concept to get a bit more mature. “But we have found plenty of early adopters,” he said. “If you show value and they see something that will move the needle, farmers are quick to adopt it.”

 

FarmWise Labs, Inc., an American agricultural technology and robotics company and another resident of WGCIT, also is moving forward on many efforts to mechanize. But it’s also already operating in the space with an automated mechanical machine that uses a combination of AI, computer vision and robotics to pull out weeds in vegetable fields.

The company currently has 12 of the weeders in the market and is offering a weekly weeding service to many growers in the Salinas Valley this summer. The company, founded by Sebastien Boyer, is well past the concept stage. “We charge a simple fee per acre for the service,” he said.

He added the service saves the grower money as the fee works out to be less expensive than the cost of the labor it replaces. As a rule of thumb, Boyer said one machine replaces about 10 workers doing the job manually. Depending upon the crop, a FarmWise weeder can complete the task on 5-10 acres a day.

FarmWise continues to offer trials and is marketing the service, but Boyer said the 12 machines now in service are solidly booked for the next 12 months. “Demand is very high, but we are in the process of adding more units,” he promised.

He estimated that by early 2023, the company will have expanded its capacity with additional units. The current FarmWise business model is to offer the weeding as a service, providing the equipment and the operator. All a contract customer must do is order the service via a cell phone app, specifying the date and the field to be serviced.

“Eventually we will have a purchase option as well,” Boyer said. “In fact, we are taking orders for delivery next year.”

Boyer noted that there are quite a few companies that are currently touting automatic weeders. He expects that two or three, including FarmWise, will survive, but he does expect there to be consolidation. And he also expects automated weeding to be quite prevalent in a relatively short time span.

“What sets us a part is the team that we have built,” he said. “We have two sets of workers. We have a group with technology expertise such as AI (artificial intelligence). And we have another group of workers with farming expertise. That helped us loop in farmers in our development process very early.”

Boyer said the early involvement of people that knew exactly what happens in the field and what a weeder had to be able to do and the challenges it faces helped FarmWise develop a workable unit very early in the process.

He said the business strategy has worked. FarmWise has created an automated weeder that does the job, does it economically for the user, and the economic model works for the company. “Each machine is profitable,” Boyer said, noting that the company isn’t yet profitable because of the high cost of development. But he said as FarmWise scales up, the financials will pencil out.

In addition, Boyer has greater ambitions for the machines the company is continually upgrading. They are developing this automated equipment so that one machine can do multiple tasks and work on multiple crops. In the future, he expects both the service and purchase options to be available. When a grower buys a machine, Boyer envisions that he or she will be able to weed a leafy greens field one week and a broccoli field the next. The same machine will be able to be programmed to spray multiple crops, the week after it weeds a ranch.

Boyer said he wants to “democratize” ag automation by building equipment that allows the user to determine how it will be utilized. This, in a nutshell, is the promise of AI. The machine will continually learn offering new services and new data.

Already, Boyer said a machine that moves through a 10-acre field weeding also is gathering data that the grower can access. For example, after weeding a broccoli field, a report can be generated that will tell the grower how many plants are in that field and their stage of growth. The data generated is an important aspect of how this new technology will compound its value to the user.

 

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The Promise of Agtech

July 21st, 2022

It was a glorious June morning. D’Arrigo California CEO John D’Arrigo and the company’s tech guy, Andy Holtz, Director of Mechanized Equipment Development, were riding on the front end of a working romaine harvester as it moved through a pristine field of beautiful heads of lettuce.

Directly underfoot were a number of cameras feeding images of the romaine crop into a computer, which was digitizing those photos to find the exact center of each. Within a few seconds, the computer would send a message to one of several robotic arms equipped with a cone-like, stainless steel cylinder and a cutting blade. The robotic arm would situate the cone over the center of the romaine head and clamp down as the blade would cut the head at its butt. The robotic arm would then place the captured head on a conveyor belt that would take it to a companion truck equipped with an automatic bagger that would place three heads in what would become a familiar romaine heart three pack. In between, there were a handful of farmworkers overseeing the operation at each step offering human touch when needed.

On this particular day, the automated process was not perfect as the robotic cones mishandled a head here and there. But a look back at the 80-inch bed that it was traversing revealed that the field was picked sufficiently clean to warrant the excitement exhibited by the two D’Arrigo executives. Holtz later reported that the missed head or two were the result of a loose bolt. “Big problems often have simple solutions,” he wrote in an email, attaching a video taken the next day of the harvester operating without a glitch.“The video shows the performance of the robots after finding the one critical bolt that had loosened up. It just so happened to be attached to our steering sensor! Once tightened up, we pressed a few buttons for alignment, and our system started to unzip this field of romaine hearts very efficiently.”

John D’Arrigo revealed that this machine is in competition with another romaine harvester D’Arrigo has developed that uses different technology to accomplish the same task. Whichever one proves to be the most efficient and cost effective will get the nod, and D’Arrigo will build what they need to accomplish the task of harvesting their romaine fields with less labor.

Holtz pointed to another harvester across the field that is the traditional winged unit used throughout the lettuce fields of California and Arizona. That harvester has some packers riding on the equipment while pickers are walking through the field cutting the romaine heads by hand and placing them on conveyor belts to deliver them to the packers. Over the years, those harvesters have been updated and configured with some labor-saving devices, but they still represent a labor-intensive operation. Holtz said that traditional harvester has a crew that is supposed to top 30 members but often it falls short and operates with fewer farmworkers because of lack of available labor. The robotic harvester and the companion bagging truck are utilizing about a dozen workers to pick, pack, palletize and transfer the pallets to another truck that butts up next to it to take the pallets to the cooler as they are filled.

D’Arrigo has no doubt that an automated harvester, as well as other mechanical harvesters being developed for other crops the company grows and markets, will be used extensively someday, sooner than later. He said the industry has no choice.

“Six or seven years ago, I saw the handwriting on the wall,” he said. “Lack of labor was going to be the dominant issue.”

Even before the coronavirus experiences of the past two years that led to much disruption on the labor front, agriculture was facing chronic labor shortages. Passing immigration reform has been a stalled endeavor for 30 years and there is no doubt that fewer workers are available for farm work. D’Arrigo established a mechanical engineering department on his ranch and he staffed it with people who could envision and build labor-saving devices.

D’Arrigo California has mechanized many different operations. It has equipment that can automatically plant seeds, weed and thin. It has automated much of its irrigation work including laying and removing drip tape, employing mulch film and moving irrigation pipe around a field. It is working on the romaine harvester as well as one to aid in the harvesting of broccoli. Holtz said its broccoli rabe harvester is no longer in the experimental phase as it has several machines in use or on order. Much of the company’s rapini [rabe] is already being mechanically harvested and packed. D’Arrigo noted that there are 450 rapine stems in one carton…that’s a lot of hand labor that has been replaced.

He believes that it is imperative that agriculture continue on a fast track to automation. Not only does it reduce the need for labor, but the industry will have a better chance of attracting more skilled workers to the jobs created by the adoption of high-tech machines. D’Arrigo has been on a mission to convince educators at the university level that they should be training the ag workers of the future who will need to be tech-savvy to operate and fix this advanced equipment.

 

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WG Women Reaches Membership Milestone

July 21st, 2022

At the midway point of 2022, WG Women reached a significant milestone: There are now more than 100 women participating in the leadership development program.

The mission statement of WG Women is to identify and prepare women in production agriculture for positions of leadership with Western Growers and the fresh produce industry. Through virtual and in-person trainings, mentoring and network events, the group envisions a fresh produce industry that reflects the value of women in production agriculture and promotes women to the highest levels of company and industry leadership.

Recent training events have included Arbinger Leadership Training, Performance Coaching: Learn How to Lead Employees to Succeed and Social Media Training, which used a proprietary Social Media Toolkit developed by Western Growers. Upcoming trainings in 2022 are DiSC—Productive Conflict in addition to Advocacy and Media Relations trainings and a rollout event to welcome WG Women members in California’s Central Coast. All training and events are free to WG Women members, an estimated annual savings of $3,000 in professional development costs.

For the women who participate in the program, dedication and investment in these trainings lead to recognition. Once accepted into the program, WG Women must complete a minimum of 36 program hours to earn an official certificate of completion.

To date, three women have achieved a certificate of completion and were recognized at the 2021 Western Growers Annual Meeting: Lacy Litten, Operations Manager of Teixeira Farms; Heather Mulholland, COO of Mulholland Citrus; and Sarah McClarty, CFO of HMC Farms. With 34 program hours to date, Marisol Moreno, Controller at Allied Potato, is very close to completing enough program credits and on track to be recognized within the next year.

Participation in WG Women is limited to employees of WG member companies, and participants are admitted following formal acceptance of the program application. To apply for WG Women and join the 100 women who have taken advantage of this member benefit, please visit www.wga.com/services/wg-women.

 

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It’s All in the Family

July 21st, 2022

Director Profile

John Powell Jr., Peter Rabbit Farms, Coachella, Calif.

Director 1996-2012, 2022  |  Member since 1977 (Cardinal Distributing Co.)

John Powell Jr. first joined the Western Growers Board of Directors when he just entered his 30s and was one of the younger chairmen when he took the helm in 2005. During his first stint as a director representing the Coachella Valley district, Powell served from 1996 to 2012. He was preceded on the board by his father John Powell Sr., who was a director from 1983 to 1995, and was elected chairman of the board in 1988. John Jr. recently rejoined the WG Board and has kept his name on the ballot for re-election.

Powell explained that he very much enjoyed his first run on the WG board and is ready to serve again if his colleagues in the desert district are like-minded. He admits that two Western Growers officials spurred his interest. “I live a few doors down from Albert Keck [the current chairman] and I thought it would be fun to serve on the board with my neighbor. Plus, I was the chairman in 2005 when Dave Puglia was hired,” he said. “I’m excited that he is the President and CEO and I’d like to help him in any way I can as a director.”

As far as getting elected to the board this year, Powell said he leaves that up to his district colleagues who will determine if he is the best candidate. “I don’t plan to campaign,” he said. “I think the best thing to do is be a good steward for the industry. I think that is a characteristic that all board members should bring to the table.”

He is also excited about the diverse group of people on the current WG board and welcomes the opportunity to serve the industry again in that capacity. “It is not a homogeneous group,” he said. “It represents a good cross section of our industry.”

As he looks back at his career and the industry he was born into, Powell said there have been many changes. On the top of the list, the “family business” concept that dominated the industry for generations is changing with consolidations, corporate ownership and private equity companies acquiring more and more family farms every year.

While he notes that change, Powell believes it does give a company like Peter Rabbit Farms a competitive advantage. Necessarily, he said corporate farms and private equity ownership have many levels of leadership. “When you are family business, the operators, managers and decisionmakers are the same people. I think it is a great model, especially for fresh produce.”

And make no mistake about it, Peter Rabbit Farms has been a family business since Palmer Powell (John Jr.’s grandfather) started the company as Cardinal Distributing in 1950. Powell was a wholesaler in San Francisco in the 1930s and ‘40s as a partner in Sunrise Produce when he saw the trend toward direct sales from shippers to retailers. He started the Coachella Valley operation and moved the family down to the desert a couple of years later.

Palmer Powell was 49 years old when he became a grower-shipper and his son, John Powell Sr., was a teenager. After graduating from University of Southern California in the late 1950s, John Sr. joined his dad and worked alongside of him until the elder Powell passed away in 1988. “He died in the saddle, working to the end,” said John Jr.

John Jr. and his sister, Suzanne, and brother, Steve, followed the same route as their father. Each one of them joined the company after graduating from college. Suzanne Powell also went to USC and then joined the firm as director of sales marketing in the mid-1980s. She retired in 2006. John Jr. graduated in 1987 from Stanford while Steve got his degree from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in 1989.

“When each of us came aboard full time, we took positions based on need,” said John Jr. “I became the inside guy doing a lot of the internal business management work while Steve became the outside guy running the operations side.”

The two have remained in those roles ever since. John Powell Sr. retired in 2003, turning over the company to his offspring. When Suzanne retired, the two sons became 50/50 partners. “I think one of the keys to our success is that we have never been at loggerheads,” said John. “A lot of times family businesses don’t work when there are two heads at the table. What happens when you are deadlocked? That’s never happened to us.”

Today, three of the four members of the fourth generation have come aboard and John says “I look forward to welcoming my daughter (Nicole) into the business sometime in the future.”

John’s son Jake is involved as are Steve’s sons, Collin and Garret. All four children are in their late 20s or early 30s. The three members of that group are in management positions that involve decision-making but are not yet in senior management roles plotting the future of Peter Rabbit Farms. That is still the domain of John Jr. and Steve, who, at 57 and 55, still have many years of work life ahead of them.

John Jr. believes the future is still bright for Coachella Valley farming but acknowledges that there are significant challenges. The valley thrives on water from the Colorado River and that is certainly a topic of concern. “Farming has never been a sure thing,” he said. “I don’t think anyone has a crystal ball that can tell us what’s going to happen to Colorado River water over the next five years, but I think we are in a good position to continue to grow the high quality crops that we are producing.”

As the company name suggests, the carrot crop is the top commodity for Peter Rabbit Farms, as it has been for decades. The company also grows lemons and has robust bell pepper and leafy greens programs as well. It markets its lemons through Sunkist and its carrots are grown for Bolthouse Farms. Peter Rabbit Farms also grows crops for other shippers, including winter vegetables for Ocean Mist Farms. It also has a team to handle sales of its own label. Over the years, the grower-shipper has altered its product mix as it dropped its sweet corn production years ago because it didn’t fit with its commodity mix and within the last five years eliminated its table grape acreage as an economic decision. “A lot of the table grapes in the valley have been replaced with lemons,” Powell said.

He does note that there will come a time when the next generation has to take control and determine how they will make the family business work for them. With potentially four members in leadership roles, Powell acknowledges that they will also have to figure out how to traverse potential deadlocks and create a workable business plan. But he is convinced that the foundation of Peter Rabbit Farms can potentially support the next generation and beyond. “There will be lot of challenges in the future that will be on their shoulders. They will have to look at the trends and it will be up to them to stay ahead of those trends.”

John Jr. and Steve did insist that each of their children get a four-year college degree or the equivalent and work for two years elsewhere before making the family business their career.

Powell is energized and feels fortunate that all four members of the fourth generation did go off to college and have returned to the Coachella Valley to pursue their life goals.

 

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President’s Notes: A Sharper Focus on American Food and Farm Policy

July 21st, 2022

By Dave Puglia, President and CEO, Western Growers

Among the more irritating adages used in political discourse is: “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” It is often applied inappropriately, kind of like: “Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting over,” which is both painfully overused and mistakenly attributed to Mark Twain.

And yet, most of these well-worn phrases reach peak utilization precisely because they are valid in so many situations.

The crisis adage is attributed in modern times to Rahm Emmanuel, Chief of Staff to President Barack Obama—but historians give the credit to Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who made the remark in the final days of World War II about his work to create the United Nations.

We have a lot of crises buffeting American agriculture—and especially the Western fresh produce industry—so maybe we should not let them go to waste.

The COVID lockdowns threw the global economy into chaos at the outset, and the effects of economic restarts sparked a host of headaches, from supply chain turbulence to inflationary pressures. Russia’s war on Ukraine crimped the production and supply of fertilizer inputs and threatens to greatly reduce the global supply of wheat. The UN projected that the number of “severely food insecure” people across the globe increased from 135 million prior to the pandemic to 276 million people today.

Here at home, drought and climate impacts exacerbated by water management policies are forcing a major reduction of food production in the Central Valley. The water shortage in the Colorado River system is getting worse, which will impact farm production. We face a chronic shortage of labor, arbitrary restrictions on crop protection tools and escalating energy costs.

We have a collision of crises that presents a danger to America’s food security. Policymakers must act wisely, or we could see a large and permanent reduction of food production capability within our borders.

That brings us to the federal Farm Bill, which is due to be reauthorized next year.

Few in the fresh produce industry know that the Farm Bill is relevant to us. That’s understandable—from its inception during the New Deal until the early part of this century, it had virtually nothing for “specialty crops.” The Farm Bill was the province of the “program crops” such as corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton and rice. But today the Specialty Crop sector benefits from nearly $4 billion in Farm Bill programs. Funding for research, pest and disease threats, nutrition priorities and block grants to states make up the bulk of our funding.

As a new Farm Bill process gears up, the specialty crop industry is preparing to defend our position, since there is always an interest group that would like to poach our funding. Interests representing products that are clearly not specialty crops are seeking to be defined as such. Among them: Hemp, shellfish, wild rice and other niche grains…and even decorative stone.

Beyond protecting what we have, we need a unified effort to expand federal support for our industry. We face domestic and international crises and the status quo won’t cut it.

We are well organized in the form of the Specialty Crop Farm Bill Alliance, a coalition of more than 120 organizations. I am privileged to serve as one of three national co-chairs, following the footsteps of Tom Nassif (whose leadership in the early 2000s led to the first-ever investment of federal Farm Bill funds for specialty crop priorities). Our first action for the 2023 Farm Bill is to strongly oppose adding hemp and other non-produce crops to our sections (or “titles”) of the Farm Bill.

The larger question is whether we should be content protecting what we have? I have been warned not to ask for new funding, because “there just isn’t any new money for the Farm Bill.” Didn’t Congress just finish finding, or rather printing, $5 trillion in “new funding” for COVID relief, much of it highly questionable in its connection to the impacts of the pandemic? Immense amounts remain unspent, but we’re supposed to accept that there isn’t any new money available for food production?

No way. The needs are clear: Step up research into pests, diseases and the strategies needed to protect our food production. Fund harvest automation, which would put the federal government into a true partnership with private sector innovators. Fund improved data collection and analysis to enable the USDA to support the fresh produce industry—especially for disaster relief—the way it does with corn, soybean, wheat and rice.

These programs need additional federal support. After all, we should never let a good crisis go to waste.

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