FarmWise has hired 15 equipment operators since the beginning of the season to support the deployment of their automated vegetable weeders across the Salinas Valley. The company is currently hiring across the board in both the field operations and engineering departments. Given their current traction, the FarmWise team expects to be adding another 200 million images of individual crops to their database this year. By doing so, the software capabilities of the FarmWise machines are getting stronger, allowing high-quality work in weedy fields and tighter spacing crops like broccoli and celery. making and increase the strength and health of their honeybee colonies. Recently, they worked with the team at TJ Honey to install their monitors. TJ Honey has moved their bees to canola crops in the past few weeks and ApisProtect will work with the team to streamline their operations. It was great to receive feedback from their team highlighting how easy and quick the installation was. If you would like to find out more about using bee monitoring technology in your commercial apiary, contact Vice President of Sales Dennis Kautz at dennis@apisprotect.com to find out more.
FarmWise
Ganaz Ganaz is excited to announce that they just closed a $7 million Series A round and will be hiring in nearly all functions—sales, customer success, marketing, engineering, product and more. Bilingual (Eng/Spa) talent is especially encouraged to get in touch. Job descriptions coming soon, but for now, interested folks can drop them a note at: www. ganaz.com/careers Radical Plastics An important tool used in high yield farming is plastic mulch film. Agricultural mulch films are utilized to reduce water usage, suppress weeds, reduce fertilizer usage and increase crop yield. They also allow for earlier planting and control of the soil temperature to improve crop quality. In the U.S., the single-use agricultural film market exceeds 500 million pounds per year. The vast majority of this film is non-degradable polyethylene which must be landfilled or incinerated after use. Radical Plastics has made significant progress towards the development of soil biodegradable mulch films. The films are made by blending conventional polymers with their patented regenerative catalyst, which renders the plastic fully biodegradable in the natural environment. Field trials of mulch film produced by Charter Next Generation, Inc. made with Radical Plastics patented technology are in progress. These films function just like conventional mulch, but at the end of the growing season, they can be tilled into the soil where they fully biodegrade leaving no residue, no toxic substances and no microplastics. This eliminates the labor and cost associated with film removal and disposal. As an added benefit, the minerals used in the proprietary catalyst formulation have even been found to be beneficial for the health of the soil. Replacing conventional plastic mulch film with our soil biodegradable films is a big step to reduce plastic pollution.
Rantizo
Rantizo is a precision ag company revolutionizing in-season field operations with drone applications. But Rantizo is more than just drone spraying. Their turnkey solution provides an end-to-end system of industry leading hardware and user-friendly software that integrates with existing digital ag tools to identify field issues and address them, precisely when and where needed.
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Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com
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