The Western Growers Foundation has partnered with the Aiello family to increase the internship reimbursement program. The Next Gen. Ag. Program currently has funding to reimburse $3,000 per intern to the employer for a total of 45 internships. The generous donation of $56,000 will cover an additional 17 internship reimbursements this summer. The students in this inaugural cohort are all pursuing a career in crop production at colleges throughout the state. The funds come from a scholarship fund that the Aiello family set up nearly 20 years ago.

The Michael Aiello Memorial Agricultural Scholarship Fund (MAMASF) was founded in Morgan Hill, California by the Aiello family in 2007 after the tragic death of beloved son and brother, Michael, who was an integral part of the family business (Uesugi Farms) as its Farm Manager. Michael had an intense passion for growing vegetable crops, and the family wanted to commemorate his life and dedication to the craft by providing assistance to other young people who were pursuing the same career as he did. Thus, the foundation was born, with the mission of providing scholarships to students from local high schools who were seeking to attend college and obtain degrees in the agricultural sciences. From 2008 to present, MAMASF has granted hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarships to these talented young men and women.

In order to take the organization to the next level and increase its impact on the agricultural world, the Aiello family sought to form a working relationship with another nonprofit foundation whose reach and resources to assist young agriculturalists was at a greater level than the one which the family had created. As Uesugi Farms was a WG member¬— and Joe and Pete had participated as a Director and participant in the Western Growers Future Volunteer Leaders Program, respectively—the Aiello family chose the Western Growers Foundation to undertake this task.

“My dad and I felt the Western Growers Foundation would be the perfect steward for our fund”, says Pete. “In our opinion, there isn’t a better organization out there which embodies the same mission and values. Its focus is the same as ours – to provide significant financial assistance to these young people to help them achieve their common goal of starting a career in production agriculture. It was an easy decision.”

After the initial cohort of internships is completed, it is anticipated that the Aiello Family will commit additional funds to continue this partnership in the future.

Last week, Cal Poly hosted its trilogy of field day events: grapes on Wednesday and strawberries and organics on Thursday. All three brought in industry players, members of the community, and Cal Poly Students.

The largest and longest running of the three events was the Strawberry Field Day. The president of the California Strawberry Commission, Rick Tomlinson, called the annual Strawberry Field Day, “where the future of farming takes root.” This is no wonder; with over 600 industry members in attendance, it has become an event strawberry agtech companies should attend.

Hosted at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo’s Strawberry Center, this is the 9th consecutive year that the field day has happened. The event spanned across strawberry fields, a parking lot industry fair, and the neighboring Wine and Viticulture Center. Throughout all these events, undergraduate and master’s students displayed their projects, showcasing Cal Poly’s “Learn by Doing” Mantra.

Startups familiar to the Western Growers Center for Innovation and Technology­Tric and Bonsai Robotics­gave in-field demonstrations. At such a largely attended event, these showcases do a great job of demonstrating to the industry that robots in ag are not on the horizon; they are already here.

The Grimm Organic Center held its fourth annual Organic Field Day immediately after in their Organic Sandbox. This was the first public viewing of the Organic Sandbox, which has recently been put into production. Unlike the on-campus Organic Farm, this plot is not Certified Organic, giving graduate and faculty researchers the liberty to trial organic and conventional treatments side by side.

People who have attended the field day every year have watched it significantly grow. This year, its two rotating stations had almost 200 people in attendance. This crowd gave graduate students a platform to present their research and continue to build connections with the industry and potential future employers. Inversely, it gives the industry a view into what Cal Poly students are being taught and hopefully an assurance that they will be ready to enter the workforce.

Two Farm Bureau analysts put together some good summary points and trend analysis of H-2A data over the past year. I’ll include links to both analysis summaries at the end of this article. Cameron Castillo from Farm Bureau put together a really solid analysis of the latest set of H-2A data, along with some key trends and some emerging regional differences worth watching. This analysis follows a similar analysis 6 months ago from another Farm Bureau analyst.

Here are the highlights:

• Certified H-2A positions in fiscal year 2025 (FY25) were 398,258, and almost 50% of them work in Florida, Georgia, California, Washington, and North Carolina. All 5 have large specialty crop acreage counts and GDP. Florida is the fastest growing H-2A state with over 14% of FY25 certifications by itself.
• One big reason for the continued growth in H-2A usage is that only 182 positions out of over 415,000 advertised received a domestic applicant in FY25 (less than .04%). This points to the continued decline in domestic farm worker availability, which creates an increasing demand for H-2A international farm workers.
• The H-2A program grew by 13,358 certified positions in FY25, the first year in program history with over 400,000 workers requested. Overall, the program has grown 185% in the last 10 years and by significantly more than double that in the last 20 years. All of the factors that have been creating H-2A demand are still largely in place.
• The H-2A gains were all over the US, with 38 states increasing their H-2A worker demand in FY25. Some of the largest H-2A usage states, including California and Washington, saw significant declines in H-2A usage in FY25. The reason for the drops in these states, which remain large specialty crop states, is hard to determine. One theory is that the ongoing regulatory cost risks in major specialty crop production states is pushing acreage to other states – and obviously if the acreage moves the H-2A workers move with it.

There are a lot more details in the Farm Bureau analysis, and I encourage everyone to give both articles a read if you have the time. In the meantime, I want to shift the focus away from H-2A growth and what it means for growers.

Many of you know that my rationale on the ongoing need for automation is that many growers end up in a position where there are only two choices to remain competitive – automate to help solve labor challenges (where labor costs $30+/hour in high regulatory cost states with large H-2A usage – compared to $4-5/hour in Mexico and many South American countries) or relocate the acreage to places with lower labor costs (and often domestic labor as a work force, which creates a structural advantage relative to states like California and Washington.

So if we look at automation, much of the progress continues to be in non-harvest activities. We estimate that segment (which is 1/3 of the total farm worker hours) to be 3-5% automated and forecast to get to 15-20% in the next 5 years. The H-2A numbers above only create a larger push for more automation. The sad part about these numbers is that the bad numbers above for H-2A create pressure on growers to continually re-evaluate the automate vs. relocate decision making process.

If H-2A continues to grow (and it is forecast to get to 500,000+ workers nationwide in the next 5-10 years – if not more), the cost pressures on all specialty crop growers will only increase. The only people this is good news for are automation startup founders – and H-2A continues to increase the need for their products when they can meet grower economics. This increasing opportunity will need to be used to help convince investors of the size of the market (the total addressable market for automation being labor costs) and that the automation market is worth investing in from a venture capital perspective. With a 70% drop in VC the last 4 years, startup founders need to do a better job than ever of matching their product and revenue roadmap with a fundraising pitch.

Links to Farm Bureau articles:

H-2A Program Use Continues to Soar

H-2A Program Usage Continues to Accelerate