Voices of the Valley

Genevieve Griffin-George speaks about her New Zealand-based agtech company, PICMI, addresses the seasonal labor shortages in the agriculture industry. During this episode of Voices of the Valley, she explains how PICMI simplifies the employment process and seamlessly connects growers to the right workers at the right time through an easy to use platform. :::this episode was sponsored by Harvestpor...

For 15+ years, rfxcel has been a leader in track and trace solutions for the life science and pharmaceutical industries. The company is now looking to transform its highly successful supply chain visibility platform to be a tool for agriculture. During this episode of Voices of the Valley, John McPherson, director of global solutions for rfxcel, will share how the flexible platform can capture dat...

Elliot Jaramillo, CEO of Concept Clean Energy, will speak about the renewable energy startup’s newest product – the Solar Tub. Jaramillo speaks about how the Solar Tub is a self-contained plastic tub that allows you to put solar on leased farmland without driving steel into the ground. It allows farmers to now put solar anywhere with virtually no heavy equipment and no power tools. :::this episode...

Jamie Bacher, cofounder and CEO of Boost Biomes, shares how his company is harnessing the potential of microbiomes (the microorganisms in a particular environment). During this episode of Voices of the Valley, Bacher gives listeners an exploratory tour of the startup’s proprietary discovery platform, which uses high throughput sequencing, selective enrichment and advanced informatics to identify m...

Jason Mellow, president of Croptracker, Inc., speaks about his startup’s cloud-based record-keeping and farm management software service. During the interview, he delves into how growers, associations, and co-operations of all sizes use Croptracker's cloud-based desktop and mobile apps to execute and monitor their harvest, schedule and track their chemical usage, cut operational costs associated w...

In this episode of Voices of the Valleys, Natasha Shields—a farmer and innovator from Baxter, Australia—shares how her farm is battling issues such as drought and climate change, using technology. As Nuffield Australia Farming Scholars’ 2019 Scholar, she has traveled internationally to discover how other countries are implementing technology and innovation to grow more food with less resources. In...

Harry Ferdon, Sr. Regional Sales Manager at SWIIM System, speaks about helping growers obtain, understand and apply their data to help with implementation of the new Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) regulations. Ferdon explains how SWIIM’s Technology can be adapted to help manage new pumping restrictions, as well as meet other regulations related to both water supply and quality. :::t...

Don Lewis and Mark Giangiorgi of US AG Solutions, LLC, discuss how technology is becoming more pervasive in the agricultural industry and with that, there is a great need for the industry to understand new tech coming to the forefront. Lewis and Giangiorgi provide a service where they translate and interpret data collected from agtech start-up companies who provide solutions to growers’ pain – suc...

Tensorfield Agriculture is building agricultural machines with a focus on applications for specialty row crops in a post-herbicide world. CEO/Co-Founder Xiong Chang and CTO Cheehan Weereratne provide an inside look into how these autonomous weeding machines use robotics, computer vision and deep learning to take precision agriculture to the next level. :::this episode was sponsored by Novihum Tech...

John Skardon, founder of Tailwater Systems, discusses how his agtech start-up company designs, builds and operates high-performance bioreactors for removing nitrates and other contaminants from field drainage and drinking water wells. The systems are compact and can be placed anywhere—in a field, next to a greenhouse or near a lift station. :::this episode was sponsored by Novihum Technologies:::...

From Farms to Incubators Founder Amy Wu speaks about her content-based startup that uses digital storytelling including video, documentary, photography and articles, to spotlight women entrepreneurs and innovators dedicated to agtech. A long-time journalist, Wu talks about the importance of showcasing female innovators and investors in the agtech sector. :::this episode was sponsored by Novihum Te...

Harrison Enright, product manager of iTradeNetwork, Inc., gives an inside look into what it’s like to be an entrepreneur in the agtech-traceability scene. He also speaks about the technology behind iTradeNetwork – a leading global provider of on-demand supply chain management and intelligence solutions to the retail, hospitality and foodservice industries. Built upon deep industry expertise, a ric...

Virginia Corless, Chief Growth Officer at Novihum Technologies, explains how her clean tech start-up is developing a unique and innovative agricultural technology to return fertility to poor and degraded soils around the globe. Wherever intensive land use or climatic changes have degraded soils and reduced yields, Novihum quickly replaces natural humic matter, rapidly improving soil quality and pr...

Envision a future where digital systems completely replace hand-written time sheets and where farmers can receive real-time visibility of crew time, production and labor costs. With Pago, that future is here. Mike Dodson, founder of agtech startup Pago, speaks about how this is the first product to serve both farm labor contractors and growers by offering a platform where the two parties can work...

Richard De Andrade, CEO & Founder, Solare Trace Inc., delves into what exactly precision ag means and how data can drive decisions on the farm that result in more yield. He shares how to apply integrated solutions to collect precision ag data, as well as discusses how his startup is currently developing next generation systems to deploy advanced item-level traceability in agriculture, with GPS tag...

Aaron Gobin speaks about a revolutionary speech-to-text data service that was designed with and for food and ag professionals—AgVoice. AgVoice is the world’s first voice and data management start-up company that allows ag professionals the freedom to work hands-free while on-the-go. Using proprietary analytics and processing of raw voice files, anyone in agriculture can conveniently and safely cap...

Charles McGregor, the Business Unit Manager at GeoVisual Analytics – an analytics firm that focuses on yield forecasting for specialty crops (fruits, vegetables and nuts). He explains how his startup uses routine monitoring of fields with airplanes, drones and mobile phones, as well as their NASA-funded AI algorithms, to help farmers to dramatically reduce production uncertainties and increase pro...

Jesse Arteaga leads business development at Ganz, an agtech startup helps farms recruit and engage with their workforce using a novel communications platform. Arteaga shares how the company has change since its inception; the company originally started out as an app-based product and has transformed into a communications platform where no data plan is needed. :::this episode was sponsored by Novih...

Dr. Pádraig Whelan of ApisProtect—an Irish company that recently opened its first U.S. office at the Western Growers Center for Innovation & Technology — explains how this agtech startup uses the Internet of Things (IoT) to help beekeepers manage colonies more effectively. He explains how ApisProtect places the power of advanced sensors and machine learning technology into the hive to deliver a 24...

For nearly 2 decades, Hank Giclas (Western Growers’ Senior Vice President, Strategic Planning, Science & Technology) has served as one of the leading experts on science & technology in agriculture. In this episode of Voices in the Valleys, he shares his thoughts on innovation in production agriculture; issues surrounding technology adoption in agriculture; rising technologies that solve challenges...

Can smart technology offer remote irrigation for agriculture that’s affordable? With the help of WaterBit, the answer is “absolutely.” Listen to this episode of Voices of the Valley, where WaterBit Field Specialist Connor Cunningham explains how his agtech start-up company offers a complete irrigation program that allows growers to automate irrigation across their crops.

Last year, FieldIn saved specialty crop growers millions of dollars in pest management by monitoring spray applications and providing alerts, in real time, on more than 6,000 application errors. More impressively, this agtech start-up company has only been up and running for three years and it already monitors almost five percent of the almond crops in California. In this episode of Voices of the...

During this episode of Voice in the Valley, Dan Reighn, the director of sales at iTrade Network, delves into new technology that brings simplicity and agility to the perishables supply chain. iTradeNetwork, a company working out of the Western Growers Center for Innovation & Technology, offers web-based software that automates the supply chain for the retail and foodservice industries. Their netwo...

Willard Lewallen, Ph. D., is superintendent/president of Hartnell College, and in this episode of Voices in the Valley, he speaks with host Dennis Donohue on the future of agtech. He also touches on how academia and education has played a role on the growth of agtech thus far and what the community can expect moving forward.

Network security is the theme of today’s Voices of the Valley episode. Chris Becerra, CEO of Terrapin Systems, provides his thoughts on how agriculture is relying more on technology than it has in the past and speaks about how crucial data security is. Becerra founded Terrapin Systems in 2005, and today, the company is the leader in open networking and a trusted partner for comprehensive networkin...