Ann Donahue
Western Growers, Director, Marketing and Communications
Ann Donahue serves as Director, Marketing and 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, […]
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New VofV Episode: The Yield Lab and the Exponential Growth Potential of Latin America
This week’s episode of Voices of the Valley explores the opportunities for agtech innovation and investment in Latin America. Accelerator The Yield Lab is dedicated to funding companies across the globe and then assisting with their growth and development for the long haul. “We’re not in a rush,” says Tomás Peña, Managing Director, The Yield ...
ChysaLabs: Eliminating the Guesswork When it Comes to Soil Health
Real-time diagnostic soil sampling can result in higher yield and optimized fertilizer costs. By Ann Donahue There is the classic business school lesson about the legs of a stool, where each leg represents one element of getting a product out the door: speed, precision and cost. An organization needs to balance all three, or else ...
CDFA Offers New Online Tool to Make Application Process for Climate Smart Ag Programs More Efficient
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…
New VofV Episode: Agtech’s Role in Combating Climate Change
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 ...
WG Seeks Participants for New Climate Change and Sustainability Working Group
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 ...
USDA Visits WGCIT to Learn About Agtech Innovation
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 ...
VofV Epsiode: Don Cameron on How Innovation and Automation Can Boost California Agriculture
Don Cameron, Vice President and General Manager of Terranova Ranch, joins the Voices of the Valley podcast to share his experiences with agtech start-ups looking to gain traction in California agriculture. “The ones that tend to come early and listen and hear what we’re saying are the ones that tend to be successful,” he says. ...
Western Growers Leads Innovative Discussions at the Western Food Safety Conference
The Western Food Safety Conference was held May 4-5, 2022 at Hartnell College in Salinas, Calif. This year’s edition of the conference had the theme “The Culture of Food Safety,” and WG members and executives shared their first-hand learnings based on their years of experience in the industry. Sonia Salas, AVP of Science at Western ...
New VofV Episode: Verdant Robotics and the Secret to Making Farmers Superhuman
Verdant Robotics Co-Founders CEO Gabe Sibley and COO Curtis Garner join Voices of the Valley to discuss the power that digitized precision farming gives to the industry. Verdant Robotics wasn’t “a solution looking for a problem,” Gabe says; instead, the multi-action robot that provides both data analytics and crop applications is the result of a ...
In Memoriam: Franz De Klotz
Western Growers mourns the loss of board member and beloved fresh produce industry veteran Franz De Klotz.
USDA Offers March 30 Webinar on Drought and Farm Loan Programs
In response to the ongoing drought in California, the USDA Kings, Tulare and Kern County Farm Service Agency (FSA) and USDA Office of Partnerships & Public Engagement are partnering to conduct a short webinar on FSA programs that offer drought benefits to farmers and ranchers. The webinar will take place on March 30 from 10-11 ...
March 29 Webinar to Focus on Using Microgrids as Practical Energy Solutions for Food Processors
Western Growers Center for Innovation & Technology Executive Director Dennis Donohue will speak at a March 29 webinar hosted by Microgrid Knowledge and entitled “Microgrids for the Food Industry: Simple and Practical Energy Solutions for Food Processors.” The panel will cover what the typical components of a microgrid are and related forms of on-site generation; ...
Assemblymember Adam Gray (D-Merced) Asks for Investigation Into the Department of Water Resources
In an opinion piece that was published Monday in CalMatters, Assemblymember Adam Gray (D-Merced) called for the California State Auditor to investigate the Department of Water Resources’ operations and management. “In the 2021 water year, California water officials disastrously miscalculated the moisture content of the Sierra Nevada snowpack,” Gray wrote. “Because the Department of Water…
VofV Podcast: Cybersecurity and the Virtual Threats to Farming
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 ...
VofV Podcast: How AI on the Farm Can Sense What Humans Can’t
In this week’s episode of the Voices of the Valley podcast, Larry Taylor, Co-Founder of The Yield Lab Asia Pacific, and Mark DeSantis, CEO at Bloomfield Robotics, bust the myth that artificial intelligence isn’t as adaptable as human intelligence when it comes to managing the health of specialty crops. With the right kind of technology, ...
Final Weeks: Deadline Extended to Complete Compensation and HR Practices Survey
The deadline for completing the Western Growers’ annual Compensation and HR Practices Survey has been extended by two weeks to April 15, 2022. The Compensation and HR Practices Survey provides key insights, analytics and data that are vital to keeping pay programs, human resource practices and employee programs current and competitive. Your participation contributes to sound, ...
Western Growers to Sponsor Western Food Safety Conference Scheduled for May 4-5
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 ...
Last Chance to Register for California Supplemental Paid Sick Leave Webinar
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 ...
Western Growers Food Safety Cohort Meets With Industry Leaders
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 ...
VofV Podcast: Working at the Digital Farm of the Future
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 ...