Posts By: Walt Duflock
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Startup Sessions: Henry Cremers Talks AgTech With Verdant Robotics
Big congrats to our WG Innovation intern Henry Cremers for putting together some great AgTech videos this summer. Here’s the first one! It was a really great summer for our WG Innovation intern Henry Cremers. He’s a Cal Poly rising senior and a Salinas guy who knows his way around ag, AgTech, videos, and social media. Naturally given that background, we put him to work talking to as many…
White Pickup Trucks, Real Farm Problems and a Good Day for AgTech
Last Thursday in San Juan Bautista, there was a great set of field demos for specialty crop automation hosted by Jennifer Clarke and the Leafy Greens Research Board along with support from Mark Mason from Nature's Reward and Tony and Daniel Alameda from Top Flavor Farms. This was a really good demo day for several reasons. Attendance was 1.5 – 2x last year’s event. Attendance is important…
The Path to $5 Billion in Automation Revenue
The most important number in specialty crop agtech is $5 billion in automation revenue in a single year. I’ve written before about the importance of automation becoming a category with more than $1 billion in annual sales. That metric is significant from a segment perspective because, across many technology categories, there is precedent for that level of revenue generating meaningful…
New H-2A Numbers Highlight the Need for Agricultural Automation
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…
The $5 Billion AgTech Strategy
Last week, we took a look at the overall $5B strategy for specialty crop AgTech automation. This week we are going to dive into some of the specific re-allocation requests and rationale. First, let’s look at the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) Climate-Smart Ag Funding, which represents $19.5B and is being used to increase existing conservation programs through NRCS through payments for…
Why Ruggedize Matters
Because Salinas Valley can benefit from the progress Silicon Valley is making on AI and this event will help both sides recognize that. There have been a lot of (and many are ongoing) discussions about the interplay between Silicon Valley and Salinas Valley. Lately, Silicon Valley is heavily focused on AI – how it’s getting used, how many vibe coders it is enabling, how many jobs it’s…
The Most Important Number to Watch in Specialty Crop AgTech
The most important number in specialty crop AgTech is annual automation revenue, and the big target we are taking on is how we can get that number up to $5B in one year. I’ve written before on the importance of getting automation to become a category with over $1B in annual sales. That metric is a big one from a segment perspective because in many tech categories there is precedent for that…
Agriculture v AI Data Centers
Water is once again right in the middle of a hot California dispute! Kudos to Erik Benson for a great article on the market dynamics that are impacting both agriculture and AI data centers around water rights, land values, and the relative impacts on state economies that are or are considering the impact if both are increased or decreased. This is not a hypothetical exercise. Data centers are…
We Need to Re-Think How We Do Bio-Controls Testing
It was a great week at the Salinas Biological Summit last week at the Salinas Rodeo Grounds. A full day of workshops and a VIP gathering on Monday, a full day of bio-controls content on Tuesday, and a full day of bio-stimulants on Wednesday. From a content perspective, I believe it was the best Summit yet. One of the topics that continually came up in content and conversations was the need for…
Some Thoughts on AI’s Impact on Tech Segments and AgTech
AI is changing how we (and for this article I mean we to specifically be AgTech startups) should think about engineering talent. I have been listening to and reading a lot of content about AI and its impact on businesses. One of the under-recognized aspects is the multiple impacts it is likely going to have on organization-wide engineering for startups. Based on what I’m hearing and reading, I…
What the Drone Ban Means for Growers
As many of you know, drones are seeing increased use cases for grower operations, including spray drones, scouting drones, aerial surveillance drones, and high-tech aerial scarecrows with dog fighting included! Well, some changes made in December are having an impact on drones in ag. These changes resulted in Western Growers hosting an online webinar that we recorded and are making available…
The AgTech Cost of Overpromising
Caroline Petrow-Cohen put a great piece out in the LA Times on Monarch Tractor and it tells the whole tale of how a company and a sector can get over-hyped and lead to bad results for all concerned. I had a chance to talk to Caroline last week, and she was focused on the right stuff: what happened with Monarch, why were they so hyped up initially, and what went wrong? She was really asking if…
Four Reasons Hort Connections Stands Out as a Great Event
I want to share a few thoughts about Hort Connections and what made it so special: 1) The energy was really high. People got up early for 7:00 am breakfasts every day and stayed late for happy hours and dinners every night. It was up early and up late all week, from the time things got going in earnest on Monday through the field demos just outside Adelaide on Friday. From my perspective, it…
WG Innovation Team has an Open Position: Senior Director of Innovation
I am very excited to share that we have an open position on the WG Innovation team. This is a Senior Director of Innovation role, and it will be a replacement for Dennis Donohue's role. So yes, whoever gets this job has big shoes to fill! Here is what you need to know about the position. 1) The primary focus will be on managing the "less chemistry" portfolio that includes: (1) precision…
The Future of Ag Drones: Navigating Chinese Supplier Drone Ban Webinar
Join industry experts who are addressing critical regulatory and supply chain developments related to the Chinese drone ban as it relates to AgTech. If you're working with drones or interested in how drones are impacting ag, Ben Palone and I will be talking ag drones with Briana Layfield and Kevin McDonald next Thursday. Drones are emerging as a space with multiple possible use cases, and…
Five Ways Western Growers and Plug and Play Are Accelerating AgTech
Last week Plug and Play (PnP) held their semi-annual Summit in Sunnyvale. It was a great week with 3,500 – 4,000 attendees hearing from thought leaders, startups, and investors about what’s going on with venture capital both generally and in specific segments like AgTech and FoodTech. It was super cool to see AgTech absolutely own the day three agenda this year with a full set of AgTech…
Big Thank You to My Friend and Former WG Colleague Mayor Dennis Donohue
We held a retirement party for Mayor Dennis Donohue at the Taylor Farms Courtyard next to the Western Growers Center for Innovation and Technology on Monday, May 18. It was a very appropriate in the perfect setting because the CIT was part of the series of events that helped establish Salinas as the epicenter of specialty crop AgTech. There were three key elements that came together to make that…
Western Growers Doubles Down on Reservoir Farms with a $1.5 million, Three-Year Partnership Agreement
I am very excited to share the news that Western Growers and Reservoir Farms have signed a three-year agreement that extends the strategic partnership and raises the capital commitment from $250,000 to $1.5 million. This is the largest investment the WG Innovation team has made in automation, and the Reservoir Farms partnership is the most strategic relationship for the WG Innovation team and…
Reminder to Everyone in AgTech: The main problem you are solving is still grower economics
Chris Kroger put a great article together in Vision Magazine that should remind everyone in AgTech (yet again) of an important truth: the problem you are solving must be one the grower recognizes and agrees must be solved. If not, it is much harder to get them to do trials with you and even harder to get them to write a check for the solution. The article’s premise is that AI is influencing…
Tulare 2026 Discussion with Paul Mikesell: The Real Numbers Driving Ag Automation Forward
I put up a post a few weeks back with my thoughts on the state of play for ag and AgTech shows, including Tulare World Ag Expo and San Francisco World Agri-Tech. I wanted to revisit Tulare for one more post, this time about a podcast I recorded with Paul Mikesell, the Founder and CEO of Carbon Robotics (you can watch the podcast here). Paul and I have had a couple of recorded sessions. I have…