UPDATE from the
F ive years ago, Western Growers 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. At any one time, there are about 50 firms operating in the Center. The following is an update on the activities of some of those firms in an effort to keep the produce industry abreast of the work being done by the resident companies. The information below has been provided by the companies. You can reach any of the residents for more information through WGCIT at wginnovation.com. Agtools is now part of Techstars launched its Center for Innovation and Technology (WGCIT), Farm to Fork Accelerator in Minneapolis working with Cargill, Ecolab, and many other corporations. The firm also made the Pepperdine Graziadio Business School 3 rd Annual List of Most Fundable Companies. It made the Top 20 achieving a “Silver Award.” Recently, Agtools also received the 2020 Tech Innovation Forum Octane LaunchPad Investor Judges’ Award, which is a Small Business Administration funded program for tech companies. ApisProtect is providing beekeepers with $98 of additional value per hive per season. The company is an Irish-based
startup that has developed an innovative solution to help commercial beekeepers monitor their beehives remotely. ApisProtect has developed this technology with commercial beekeepers in the United States to provide highly accurate insights to deliver more and stronger hives to growers, while also increasing their profits. ApisProtect’s monitoring technology provides real-time hive monitoring and delivers a 24/7 early warning system about at-risk hives and gives beekeepers actionable information to help prevent losses and increase colony productivity. If you are interested to learn more, sign up to “Insights from ApisProtect” or download the commercial product specification sheet at www.apisprotect.com or email enquiries@apisprotect.com. Energy technology firm Concentric Power Inc . and California’s Gonzales Electric Authority have entered into an Energy Services Agreement to deliver wholesale electric power via a community- scale microgrid in and around the Gonzales Agricultural Industrial Business Park. The microgrid will start with 35 megawatts of capacity to provide locally generated, resilient and sustainable power to the agricultural industrial park, which houses processing facilities for some of the country’s largest fresh vegetable and wine producers. Concentric Power designed the intelligent microgrid to integrate a mix of 14.5M megawatts of solar energy, 10
megawatts of battery energy storage and 10 megawatts of flexible thermal generation. All the power sources are managed by the company’s Advanced Microgrid Controller. The system will allow the park to island from the wider energy grid, ensuring that end users have reliable, high-quality power 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, even when facing planned or unplanned grid outages. Ganaz, Inc . launched a solution for farms to modernize HR employee onboarding. More than 20 ag companies in three states (CA, WA & OR) have implemented paperless employee onboarding at their field and packing operations. The HR onboarding tool saves time and money for growers and helps them keep better records in their digital platform. Ganaz also saw a considerable increase in the use of their two-way texting solution this year. Growers have seen a significant benefit in communicating with their workers through this platform, sharing policies, procedures, and work updates directly to their employees’ phones. The current crisis may have accelerated its adoption but using a two-way texting platform for mass and personal employee communication has proved to be the way forward. GeoVisual continues to deliver specialty crop measurement and analysis tools tailored on a company-
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NOVEMBER | DECEMBER 2020
Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com
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