Posts By: Walt Duflock
- All
- June, 2026
- May, 2026
- April, 2026
- March, 2026
- February, 2026
- January, 2026
- October, 2025
- September, 2025
- July, 2025
- May, 2025
- March, 2025
- October, 2024
- November, 2023
- October, 2023
- September, 2023
- August, 2023
- July, 2023
- June, 2023
- May, 2023
- April, 2023
- March, 2023
- February, 2023
- January, 2023
- July, 2022
- May, 2022
- April, 2022
- March, 2022
- January, 2022
- December, 2021
- November, 2021
- October, 2021
- September, 2021
- August, 2021
- July, 2021
- June, 2021
- May, 2021
- March, 2021
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…
Helping Elected Officials Understand Specialty Crops and AgTech
I wanted to share some of the recent activity in the Western Growers Center for Innovation and Technology (WGCIT) and at our partners at Reservoir Farms. Both are great locations for meeting with elected officials for the same reason. We have several prominent growers and WG Board members within a short drive of both, which makes it easy for us to get our members involved in the conversations.…
The New AgFunderNews AgriFoodTech Report is Here
It’s here! Yes, folks, last week was World Agri-Tech in San Francisco, and so once again that means that the team at AgFunderNews released their annual report Global AgriFoodTech Investment Report 2026, which goes in-depth (as always!) into the funding highlights and analysis of why things changed in 2025 and are likely to continue changing in 2026. I have had the chance to read the report for…
Welcome to the New Front Door for AgTech Startups – Thanks Plug and Play!
The WG Innovation team would like to offer a new front door for AgTech startups that want to talk to Western Growers members. I am excited to share the release of the new page that our partners at Plug and Play have put together: Western Growers Association | Startup Intake Form The Startup Intake Form is easy to complete. When you click through to the page, you press Start and it’s very…
Reservoir Farms Grand Opening Monday March 16!
We are excited to share that Monday was the Grand Opening for Reservoir Farms first location in Salinas. There were over 300 RSVPs as of last Friday and I am writing this before driving down for the Grand Opening, so we expect several hundred people to come by and support the launch. Salinas Mayor Dennis Donohue and Western Growers President and CEO Dave Puglia will be joining the event for…
Marketing for AgTech Startups is Getting a lot Harder
I talk to a lot of event teams, a lot of growers, and a lot of startups about events for a couple of reasons. First, I am always looking for clever new event hacks to help secure a new audience segment, new content segments that provoke audience curiosity that help get a crowd into a room, and new formats or tools that create additional engagement while at the show or before or after the live…
USDA Ag Outlook Panel – Keeping the Automation Funnel Healthy with Economic Development Federal Grants
Last week was a great week for specialty crop automation in Washington, DC. Big thanks to Chris Purdy, the Chief Innovation Officer at USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) for setting up a panel on specialty crop labor challenges and automation and innovation opportunities for me, Western Growers Senior Director of Automation and Commercialization Ben Palone, and Reservoir Farms Founder and…
AgTech Ecosystem – Thoughts from Homecoming Week, err, Tulare World Ag Expo!
Well friends, it is Homecoming Week here in Tulare as much of the agriculture and AgTech community gathers for World Ag Expo to show off products, talk shop, catch up with old friends and make some new ones. Here were my thoughts from a WG Innovation Newsletter article written before heading to Tulare. And now that I have been at the show all day on Tuesday and Wednesday, I’ve got a few…
Here comes Tulare – Homecoming Week 2026!
Well friends, it is Homecoming Week – no, not for your favorite high school or college football team (that was in the fall for those who don’t go!), but for the agriculture and agtech community to gather in Tulare for World Ag Expo. It is the first big west coast ag event of the year, and it is fair to call it homecoming week because everyone from the ag industry now and for the past couple…
$3B in Agtech Automation Could Create 6,000–7,000 Jobs Over Five Years
I’ve been looking into what venture capital funding levels will look like in the next five years (2026-2030) and how much of an impact we can expect to get from automation investment on job creation. This has implications as we look for alternative (i.e. non-VC) funding sources because economic development is often a rationale that can help secure many public sources of funding, including…
2025 Automation Spending Analysis
Automation is now a late-stage capital sink that is gaining share of agrifoodtech spending as virtually every other category implodes. Here are some of the key findings as I dug through the 2025 data to see what’s likely coming in 2026 for automation based on AgFunderNews data from the last 10 years. 1) There are some structural insights and some definite phases in the automation segment.…
One Small Trip to Yuma, One Small Step Forward for Specialty Crop Harvest Automation
Rhishi Pethe and Ben Palone went to Yuma two weeks ago and it was the start of a new path for Western Growers on harvest automation. Ben put together a great agenda for Rhishi that included meetings with growers, farm workers and agtech automation experts with the goal of starting to develop a Product Requirements Document for an iceberg lettuce harvest automation solution. Solutions like this…