NEW TECHNOLOGY.
BIOLOGICALS On June 20-21, 2023, WG (with our partners at Wharf 42) launched the Salinas Biological Summit to bring the world together and focus on the emerging portfolio of chemical and biological solutions for crop protection. Over 300 attendees—including chemical manufacturers, distributors, innovators and researchers—had a chance to learn from each other and review the state-of-the-art and cutting-edge innovations with the people developing and investing in them. The next Salinas Biological Summit will be June 25-26, 2024.
AUTOMATION FIRA USA, co-sponsored by Western Growers, was held September 19-21, 2023, at the Salinas Sports Complex. With help from our partners UC ANR and GOFAR, the event transitioned to an outdoor format with live demonstrations in vegetables, orchards and vineyards all three days. With over 1,700 attendees, 50+ exhibitors and 17 companies providing live demonstrations, the event helped create new conversations between robot manufacturers, partners and growers. This year a high school student event was added on day one that had over 300 local students getting a dynamic overview of the automation offering and ag (and/or Agtech) as a possible career path. FIRA USA 2024 will be held at Yolo County Fairgrounds in October 2024, and beginning in 2024, verified growers get to attend for free. NEXT GEN AG WORKER WG received grant support to identify and develop curriculum that helps solve skills gaps, helps educate more students with the curriculum and helps place them in internships while providing up to $3,000 per student in scholarship costs for the position. The grant target is to deliver 3,000 agtech-enabled workers over four years. With 500 students using the curriculum modules in fall 2023, we are comfortably on pace to exceed that target. The extra funds are being used to develop a mobile app for tracking students after they completed curriculum modules and provide additional scholarship funds.
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