Thanks to Andrew Jason and the Grand Farm team for being great hosts in Fargo for Autonomous Nation and several related activities. They really made a full couple days out of the event – as you should if you’ve got a bunch of folks in town! Always great to see friends and make some new ones. Lots of great stuff going on in Fargo the four days I was there, highlighted by Autonomous Nation event.

I really enjoyed getting a chance to share some thoughts on specialty crop automation, including a pretty deep dive into some of the new moves that Tyler Niday and the Bonsai Robotics team is making to really get spray-as-a-service moving in earnest. The best thing about this model is it allows growers to buy results while the channel manages capital, utilization, and labor shortage risk. As discussed, weeding automation has become a successful capex category, and Carbon Robotics reached $100M in revenue last year with an ROI based on labor savings. Then Ecorobotix entered the US market, has moved 1,000 precision spray machines globally, and created the next $100M category. Now, here comes Bonsai with a services channel play that could become the next $100M category over the next few years.

Always great to see startups making progress on stage and sharing their story. Nice job Aigen and Kenny Lee. I appreciated Daniel Kirstein’s candid critique of the journey he went through at Farmwise and sharing some lessons learned for other founders. The Pyka fixed wing drone with 80-gallon payload could help get things moving in the drone spray space.

And finally, as always, the lunches and dinners just create really fun and interesting conversations. There is (as always) a lot going on in AgTech! To my friends old and new – I always enjoy the wide variety of topics we get to roll through on our trips to events. Keep them coming. Many of them create opportunities we should be able to do some real building around.

The vibe and energy at Startup Brew was impressive – anytime people are willing to get up early for networking and pitches, you know there’s some good stuff going on. The whole trip was a great experience – my first trip to Fargo and Grand Farm HQ and it did not disappoint. The Grand Farm tour from John Mann shows off the potential of what the 600 acres can become. Talk about a guy that knows a lot about agriculture, I learned a ton – thanks John! I have now been to both Grand Farm locations (Tifton GA). What an impressive company the team has built and continues to build. from what I could tell it’s just getting started! I will be back to Fargo!

And of course we are only to happy to return the favor. We are looking forward to hosting the Grand Farm team with a delegation in tow to Cali in a few weeks. Western Growers CIT, Reservoir Farms, and Plug and Play – we’ll keep you moving on your trip out west!

Great article from Cassidy Walter in Successful Farming comparing Midwest farming with California farming. They are the same in terms of margin pressure and increasingly global competition. They are different because California farmers deal with these issues while operating in the most regulated state in the country. Cassidy does a great job of getting the growers perspective on increasing regulatory costs and their impact while also laying out the cold hard facts – which as Cal Poly has determined are that regulatory costs have increased 1,366% over 19 years to more than $1,600/acre/year. The regulatory costs of water have risen (by up to 60% since 2017), but the far larger cost with water is SGMA (the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act), which will end up resulting in farmers having to fallow agricultural production acreage because of a lack of groundwater. Overtime laws have only exacerbated the problem because workers are often capped at 40 hours/work to avoid additional cost increases from overtime pay, which creates the need for more workers via the H-2A program resulting in $30-32/hour labor rates when fully loaded with transportation, housing, and food costs.

Automation remains the most scalable solution to labor challenges. For non-harvest (weeding, thinning, harvest assist, spraying), we are around 3-5% automated with a clear path to 15-20% and $1 billion in annual automation revenue by 2030 for the key players in this segment. For harvest, we are at less than 1% automated and trying to get more creative in developing a solution. This rise in regulatory and labor costs is one of the reasons why USDA data and some straight-line projections suggest California will lose 32% of acreage and 52% of growers over 55 years. It is increasingly more difficult for small farmers to make California ag acreage operate profitably.

I talk about Peru often because the policy decisions Sacramento and Lima are making are very different, from infrastructure ($3.6B Chancay port) to water (Peru investing $24B in private-public efforts on 22 projects), and combined with an inherent labor cost advantage (domestic availability at $4/hour – versus the $30-$32/hour for H-2A for CA growers). Peru’s targets of adding 1 million additional hectares (2.47 million acres) of irrigated production and reaching an ag export target of $40 billion by 2040 mean Peru is likely to exceed California for ag exports by 2035. The Midwest and specialty crop growing states would do well to watch what California has done to decide if they want to go in the same direction – or do something different.

California Farming’s Cautionary Tale for the Midwest

Two years of work. More than 400 companies. Fifteen different task segments. And an agricultural robotics industry that continues to change rapidly.

Last week, I was fortunate to participate in a panel discussion hosted by Sarah Masterson with the California AgTech Alliance focused on the 2026 Crop Robotics Landscape, developed by Chris Taylor and Michael Rose of The Mixing Bowl and Better Food Ventures.

For those of us working directly with growers and agricultural technology companies, this landscape is much more than a collection of logos. I use it regularly and discuss many of the companies represented on it with growers weekly, if not multiple times a week. It has become an incredibly valuable resource for understanding where technology development is occurring, where investment is flowing and where gaps remain.

The numbers behind the 2026 landscape illustrate just how dynamic the sector is.

More than 400 companies are represented across 15 task segments, and collectively, companies on the landscape have raised more than $600 million over the last two years. The number of companies represented is up nearly 25% compared to 2024.

But growth does not tell the entire story.

Approximately 20% of the companies included in the 2024 landscape are gone, while 36% of those represented in 2026 are new entrants. That turnover reinforces something growers and those of us working in agricultural innovation see regularly: developing promising technology is one challenge. Building a durable company, proving the technology commercially and creating enough value to drive grower adoption is another.

The geographic distribution is also notable. Approximately half of the companies represented are based in Europe. The United States accounts for 18%, and more than 40% of those U.S. companies are based in California.

During the webinar, I joined Danny Bernstein from RESERVOIR and Sebastian Sanchez from LWDA to discuss what these trends mean on the ground. We covered current adoption trends, what growers still need, how technologies move from promising demonstrations to dependable commercial tools and how our organizations can work together to prepare agriculture’s workforce for increased automation.

For Western Growers Innovation, that last piece is important. Our role is to help growers understand emerging technologies, connect them with credible companies, create opportunities for real-world validation and provide information that helps support better on-farm decisions.

There is also an important legacy behind this work.

Our friend and the late Rob Trice, founder of The Mixing Bowl, was passionate about bringing people together to accelerate innovation across food and agriculture. His passion for collaboration and building a stronger agricultural technology ecosystem lives on through the Crop Robotics Landscape and the people continuing this important work.

Thank you to Sarah, Chris, Michael, Danny and Sebastian for the discussion, and to everyone who joined us, including Jason Giannelli. Go Bulldogs.

Link to the landscape here.

Today is my 16th day at Western Growers. I’m thrilled to be here. You have all been welcoming and supportive. Thank you, Walt, for the opportunity.  

We are moving swiftly to build this new initiative and deliver value to grower members. The program structure is set.  Our initial budget is secured. Conversations have begun with potential science partners. And we have handshake agreements with several innovation companies. We’ll be running innovation field trials with leading growers before year end.    

Over the past few weeks, I have traveled across California to meet with most WGA Innovation Committee members. I’ve gotten to know them personally, asked questions about their operations, met their team, and homed in on their priority crop protection and production challenges.    

I’ll use this newsletter to briefly introduce myself and, more importantly, share our progress. 

Matt’s Story 

I have made a career out of serving growers by building and operating science and innovation programs. Agriculture is personal to me. My family has farmed in Lodi, California, for five generations, and that history has shaped who I am and how I approach my work.  

I spent a decade at Driscoll’s quickly and energetically building new capabilities, including five years leading agtech programs within Global R&D, where I was hands-on testing and deploying the likes of TRIC Robotics, Suterra’s Bio Magnet Ruby, and Burro across thousands of acres globally. Along the way, I learned how to talk farming with growers, strategy with executives, and everything in between. I then had a thrilling year at Reservoir moving at lightning pace to build Reservoir Salinas into the fully functioning agtech incubator it is today. Before Driscoll’s, I led viticulture research, outreach, and sustainability programs for the Lodi Winegrape Commission.  

I’ll tell anyone who will listen that I am a proud Cal Poly agriculture alum. I also earned an M.S. from Iowa State University and a Ph.D. from UC Davis, where my sociology work focused on what drives grower adoption of sustainable practices. 

Perspective on Grower Economics 

To say grower economics is important is an understatement. It’s everything.  

A friend and mentor of mine once said “eliminating synthetic pesticides is easy. I don’t know why everyone is making a big deal about it. All one must do is stop using them. The hard part is doing that while also feeding the world and supporting the livelihoods of those who make up the heartbeat of this industry.”   

($100 to anyone who correctly guesses who that quote is attributed to.) 

A farm that can’t pay its bills can’t adopt innovative farming practices that move the industry toward better collective outcomes. Strong grower economics is the key to sustainable agriculture.   

In high-value crops, yield is typically the largest driver of grower economics. My experience with grower-level economic analysis is that sometimes a single-digit yield increase can pay for the most expensive innovations over a few seasons.  

Yield is king. So, what’s the connection between crop protection and grower economics? Pests, diseases, weeds, and pollination, when they go wrong, can reduce yield by 10% to 30%. Innovation offers a great opportunity to earn some of that yield back.  

Where we are Headed 

We have expanded WGA’s aperture to include more than biologicals. We’ll be engaging in a range of innovation companies addressing pests, diseases, weeds, pollination, and nutrition. The job is to scout, validate, and deploy these solutions with WGA members with the dual goals of 1) reducing synthetic chemical use while 2) improving yield and grower economics. 

The Innovation Team is charging forward by building two new and distinct programs. It’s coming together quickly.  

The first is the Biopesticide Efficacy Program. The second is a Transformative Crop Protection Program. These names are descriptive but clunky. Let’s talk if you have better ideas. 

Before I dive into the programs, I’ll say that our north star will be what I’ve been referring to as 10 X 3.  These are the top ten WGA crops and the top three pests or diseases per crop.  

Staying focused on the big problems will allow us to move confidently and have the largest impact. This prioritization work is close to completion and will be shared with the Innovation Committee for comments in late October. All the big ones are there, like diamondback moth in brassica, navel orange worm in buts, INSV/thrips in lettuce, and vine mealy bug in grapes. 

Now back to the two programs. 

Biopesticide Program 

The biopesticide market is crowded and confusing, and growers and their advisors often lack the data and experience to confidently choose products. Yet growth and investment in the space is exceptional. (I’m sure Walt has the figures memorized.) Plus, there is the litany of reasons for growers to reduce synthetic pesticide use that we all know to be true and have heard stated ad nauseum. This is a big opportunity for WGA to deliver value. Which biopesticides work well and which less well?  It’s the questions everyone is asking. And the one we are designing the program to answer.  

With science partners across California, we will be positioned to conduct about 100 per year efficacy trials aligned with the 10 X 3. If we keep our current pace, we may be finalizing agreements with the first batch of biopesticides before Christmas and commencing testing by spring 2027.  

Reservoir, Cal Poly, and Ag Metrics Group are all part of the discussion. Nothing is final yet, but I expect contracts to be signed by mid-October. WGA and participating companies will share the costs. WGA will own the data, and we will use it to give our members a competitive advantage in the biopesticide space. 

Transformational Program 

Unlike biopesticides, which more or less follow a well-worn path from regulatory approval to field application, transformational solutions require growers and scientists to think differently about crop protection. 

UV-C light for fungal control in strawberries is a great example. When we first went to market with TRIC Robotics, growers had legitimate questions. Does it actually control powdery mildew and botrytis? Does the light penetrate the canopy well enough? Does it replace or complement fungicides? Who operates the vehicles? Is it organic approved? Why apply it at night? What will the neighbors think? And on and on. 

We eventually answered those questions, and Driscoll’s gained confidence in efficacy, practicality, and economics. TRIC can reduce or even eliminate fungicide use while managing disease and making economic sense. Getting there took time (about two years), resources, and smart people doing their best work. Technologies like this can transform specialty crop protection, but only if industry leaders like WGA step in as coaches, guides, networkers, and friends. 

WGA has budget for ~5 transformational innovations in our program at any time.   

Welcome Agragene 

We are standing up our first transformation partnership with Agragene, a St. Louis company going to market this year with what could be a game-changing solution for controlling spotted wing drosophila (SWD). SWD is a major pest of soft fruit, especially raspberries and blackberries. Females lay eggs in fruit before harvest, resulting in larvae crawling around in the fruit by the time it is delivered to the cooler. Berry companies have zero tolerance, and rejected fruit costs the industry hundreds of millions of dollars annually. 

Agragene uses gene editing to produce sterile male SWD. Flooding the environment with sterile males, known as sterile insect technique (SIT), has worked for other crop and livestock pests. What is new is using gene editing to deliver sterility, making large volumes of flies available at a cost growers can afford.  

The logistics are as follows: Agragene contracts with regional insectaries who rear their gene edited flies. The grower receives periodic shipments of boxes containing media and pupa. Sterile male flies emerge shortly after. Growers replace boxes frequently per recommended density. Sterility prevents the genetically edited material from persisting in the wild fly population. 

Agragene’s leadership team was in Watsonville last week to meet with WGA. Trial design and grower recruitment are underway. They have EPA approval and are working through CDPR. The expectation is that they will serve ~2,000 acres as early as fall 2026. WGA growers have first dibs. I’ll be in Oxnard later this week meeting with WGA growers and potential science partners. The major berry companies are engaged.   

Wrap Up 

I am an open book and welcome feedback. Please reach out to me with questions and comments at [email protected].