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Posts By: Walt Duflock

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What a Great Week in the Pacific Northwest for AgTech!

I was up in Seattle and Yakima a couple of weeks back and it was a great week for both the Pacific Northwest (PNW) and AgTech. Here are the highlights: 1. Erik Benson – take a bow for the second annual AgTech CEO Summit. Held on Monday in the Seattle area. In just two years, Erik has built one of the coolest events in AgTech. This is what you would build if you could build something from…

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A Tale of Two Cities: Specialty Crop Agriculture 2040

For decades, California has been the center of specialty crop agriculture for the U.S. and much of the world, growing fruits, nuts and vegetables for Californians, Americans and international consumers. The Mediterranean climate was perfectly suited to many specialty crops, and the microclimates within the state allowed growers to choose growing slots that fit an increasingly common 12-month…

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Meet the Entrepreneurs Training 70,000-Pound Robots to Pick Your Broccoli

How do robots become a vital part of the $222 billion farming business? Practice, practice, practice. It is always nice when a journalist from a general business (i.e. non-AgTech) magazine comes by Reservoir Farms to see what is going on with the world’s first on-farm robotics incubator. It is even better when they stay for a few hours, talk to a few growers, talk to a few startups, ask a…

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Congratulations to Gail Delihant for making the Packer 25 for 2026!

Big congratulations to my WG colleague Gail Delihant for making the Packer 25 for 2026. The Packer does a great job covering the key topics and movers and shakers in agriculture, and Christina Herrick does a great job covering both really complex issues (like some of the automation topics we've walked through) and articles like this celebrating the people doing a lot of the key work in support…

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Top 10 Specialty Crop Automation Stories of 2026 (so far!)

I am working with ChatGPT to help me track the latest news and activities in specialty crop automation. A couple of weeks back I asked it to compile a list of the top 10 automation headlines for the year to date (so January through September). Here are the topics it came up with, and a few thoughts from me on the significance of each. Carbon Robotics crosses $100M in revenue There's no…

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AgTech Partnerships Matter More Than Ever

I wanted to share Ben Palone’s LinkedIn post from a couple of weeks ago and provide additional context. While I was on a CDFA delegation in Australia with CDFA Secretary Karen Ross and a bunch of growers, researchers, and industry delegates, Ben was headed to Sacramento to attend the signing of a landmark five year agreement between the State of California and Queensland, Australia, focused on…

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Farm to Fame Podcast Talks Changing Specialty Crop Landscape

Big thanks to Ali Cox for having me on her Farm to Fame Podcast last week. Thoroughly enjoyed the conversation, and as you can imagine, we covered a lot of ground in 28 minutes! Give it a listen if you've got time. Otherwise, here are a couple of the highlights: 1) We walked through the Peru origin story - the combination of watching a lot of Imperial Valley acreage wander east to Yuma and…

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The Next Wave of AgTech Is Taking Shape

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…

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California Agriculture – A Cautionary Tale for Other Specialty Crop States

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…

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Welcome Matt Hoffman – Senior Director of Innovation

We are excited to share that Matt Hoffman is joining the WG Innovation team as Senior Director of Innovation. We welcome Matt to the team, and I wanted to share some of his background and why we think he is the perfect fit for this role. The role sits at the intersection of agriculture chemistry inputs and innovations to help growers use less chemistry while still getting comparable results in…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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