With a grant awarded by the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) in 2022, Western Growers has launched the Next Gen Ag Workers program.

The diamondback moth (DBM) has become a growing operational crisis for brassica growers along California’s Central Coast. In recent years, however the escalating DBM pressure has led to significant crop damage, rising rejection rates, and sharply increasing production costs—placing real strain on the economic viability of many farming operations. What was once a localized pest issue has become a region-wide challenge, with the Central Coast now experiencing some of the most severe impacts on brassica production.

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. In addition, we have many AgTech startups that are regularly in Salinas Valley because that’s either their headquarters or it’s their US headquarters if they’re based internationally. Access to startups and growers makes for productive conversations with elected officials because they are literally where the rubber meets the road (or more accurately where the robots and biologicals meet the fields and plants).

KipTraq Introduces “Brandi,” a Powerful New AI Assistant KipTraq is excited to announce the launch of Brandi, our new AI assistant built directly into the KipTraq platform. Designed to simplify complex workflows, Brandi can instantly summarize thousands of inspections—data, comments, and observations—and deliver a concise, easy‑to‑read briefing in English or Spanish. These summaries can also be automatically emailed to your team on a customized schedule.

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 the first time this week. I will give it a couple more reads in the next few weeks, and I often like to compare the content and context to prior years to see where there are some lessons to be learned across multiple years that you don’t always get from a single year analysis. The AgFunderNews is one of the key pieces of analysis for AgriFoodTech. It’s the AgriFoodTech version of Mary Meeker’s Internet Report, and it’s absolutely must-see TV (or must-read print!).