Ann Donahue serves as Director, Communications for Western Growers, where she is responsible for external communication efforts and publicizing the Association’s executives, initiatives, and members across all media platforms. Ann spent more than 20 years as an editor and reporter covering entertainment journalism, with bylines at publications including Variety, the L.A. Times, Billboard, IndieWire, and […]
IRVINE, CALIF. (April 4, 2022) – The past month’s episodes of Voices of the Valley, the podcast hosted by Dennis Donohue, the Director of Western Growers Center for Innovation & Technology, and Candace Wilson, Regional Director at Farmers Business Network, feature six agricultural leaders discussing how they use technology to increase food safety, crop yield…
The California Department of Food and Agriculture, the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research and the Conservation Biology Institute have released a new web-based tool to provide farmers and ranchers with essential information about applications for climate smart agriculture programs. The tool is named RePlan: Regional Conservation and Development Planning Tool, and it combines site…
Sarah Nolet, Co-Founder and General Partner at Sydney, Australia-based VC firm Tenacious Ventures, focuses on investing in early-stage agtech startups with an eye towards how they will help provide innovations to assist with the ramifications of climate change. “Ag can actually be a solution for a lot of the challenges we’re facing,” Nolet says in ...
The push for climate-minded policies at the state and federal level is getting stronger than ever. Countless proposals are being floated – from carbon emission reduction and renewable energy technologies to farm conservation programs and water quality. However, all these efforts currently overlook or miss a key point: their impact on – or usefulness to ...
On April 26, 14 representatives from the U.S. Department of Agriculture visited the Western Growers Center for Innovation and Technology in Salinas, Calif. Among those who toured the facility to meet with the startups was Bill Richmond, Chief of the U.S. Domestic Hemp Production Program for the USDA and Robin Chilton, Director, Standards Division of ...
Do you use computers in your office? Guess what, you’re a tech company. “We’re not in a paper world anymore,” says Greg Gatzke, President and CEO of ZAG Technical Services, countering the common misconception that there is a dividing line between the Salinas Valley and Silicon Valley. “The more reliant you are on technology, the ...
Western Growers is sponsoring the 17th Annual Western Food Safety Conference, which will be held May 4-5, 2022 at Hartnell College in Salinas, Calif. This will be a hybrid event with both in-person and virtual attendance via Zoom. The speakers from Western Growers include Sonia Salas, the AVP of Science; Dennis Donohue, the Executive Director ...
Join us on April 13 at 11 a.m. PT as we discuss the 2022 COVID-19 Supplemental Paid Sick Leave Law reviving an employer’s obligation to provide paid sick leave for COVID-19 related absences. During the webinar, we will discuss the new legislation and how it interacts with California paid sick leave, exclusion pay, and ...
Drew McDonald, the Senior Vice President of Quality & Food Safety at Taylor Fresh Foods, shared his insights on April 4 in a virtual webinar with the inaugural class of the Western Growers Food Safety Cohort. The webinar, entitled “A Year of Food Safety Acceleration for Rapid Diagnostics and Prevention Technologies,” focused on McDonald’s “three ...
Mark DeSantis, CEO of Bloomfield Robotics, makes a return visit to the podcast to discuss how agtech can improve work conditions for those employed at a farm. It’s not about making humans irrelevant to the field, he says, but instead it’s about creating new job categories in the labor market. “It’s not that people are ...
The California Farm Water Coalition and the Family Farm Alliance teamed up with farms and farm-related businesses to buy a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal on April 2 to inform a mainstream audience of the impact that the region’s drought will have on consumers. It warns about the risk to a key element ...
Dr. Jerry Buckley, the President of Reedley College, joins Voices of the Valley to talk about the vital need to expand the relationship between agriculture and community colleges in California. “Across the country, community colleges are the best-kept secret that we have,” he says, noting that with its 2.1 million students in attendance every year, ...
The AgTechX Ed workforce development event tomorrow at Hartnell College in Salinas will feature a fireside chat with Karen Ross, Secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture – and the opportunity to examine robots from agtech startups up close. The startups showcasing at the event include AerialPlot, Corigin, Pago, iFoodDS, AgTools, AgMonitor, Kiptraq, ...
Last week an article entitled “Outbreak Investigations of Cyclospora cayetanensis Infections 2013-2020: Progress Made and Challenges that Remain” was published in the April/May issue of Food Safety Magazine. The article’s main discussion points include common challenges encountered during outbreaks of Cyclosporiasis, successes and breakthroughs, sample findings and how to address…
