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By Dennis Nuxoll, Vice President, Federal Government Affairs

Last year, Western Growers began working to create a coalition across the Western United States to insist that any infrastructure package that Congress passed must include significant resources for water infrastructure in the West.

By Tim Linden

On August 16, in their annual report on the level of Hoover Dam’s Lake Mead, federal officials revealed that the water level has fallen to a point that automatically triggers cuts in Arizona’s water deliveries for 2022.

By Stephanie Metzinger

Agriculture has a shortage of labor to perform key functions such as harvesting, weeding and thinning. This decades-long labor shortage is exacerbated by the lack of immigration reform and an aging workforce. As a result, there is a critical need for leading-edge innovation from startups, established agtech equipment makers and solution providers.

By Matthew Allen, Vice President, State Government Affairs

There is simply no industry that brings a value like agriculture to the daily lives of human beings. Farmworkers and growers work together to plant, harvest and distribute an unbelievable variety of sustenance for our state, nation and world. We go to the grocery store, shop online and open our refrigerators, largely taking for granted that what we want to eat will be there.

Participants in this referral service agree to give Western Growers members a 15 percent discount off of their normal legal services rates.* The WG member law firms listed below specialize in a wide array of legal issues to fit virtually any need a member may have, from business contracts to labor issues to food safety liability. WG law firm members who advertise in this issue have earned bold face designation and a descriptive phrase explaining their scope of practice.

Recent events in agtech and agtech acquisition activity have brought to light a new focus area for Western Growers: the need to increase capital sources for harvest automation.

Five years ago, Western Growers launched its Center for Innovation and Technology (WGCIT), housed in the Taylor Farms building in downtown Salinas. WGCIT brings together the ag industry and firms operating in the technology space to actively work on some of agriculture’s most vexing problems.

By Ken Cooper, Director of Risk Strategy, Western Growers Insurance Services

In late July, the California Commissioner of Insurance once again approved a decrease in the workers’ compensation pure premium advisory rates, which are used by insurance carriers to set their rates for coverage. As a result, policyholders are likely to see a decrease in their workers’ compensation premium rates for the seventh year in a row. In fact, the approved rate reduction effective September 1, 2021, is the eleventh overall rate reduction since January 2015.

By Teresa McQueen, Corporate Counsel, Legal

October of 1991 was the first time many people ever thought about sexual harassment. Millions watched as Anita Hill stood before an all-male U.S. Senate committee, recalling sexually charged incidents that occurred at the hands of her former supervisor, then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.