There are dozens of experiences I could share. I could write about the technology and automation I’ve seen in the field, the packing facilities I’ve walked through or the conversations that have stayed with me long after a tour ended. At some point, though, this article would become a book. What all of those experiences have taught me is surprisingly simple: food looks different once you understand what it takes to grow it. I still find myself looking for the best strawberries at the grocery store. I’m still a consumer, after all. But now that clamshell represents more than what I see through the plastic. I see the person moving through the field selecting the fruit. I think about the skill it takes to pack it. I think about the grower making decisions months before I ever walk into the store. I think about weather, water, labor, transportation and all the other things that had to go right for those strawberries to be sitting in front of me. Most of all, I think about the people. So, to the growers who have indulged my curiosity, answered my questions and taken time out of already busy days to show me what you do: thank you. Thank you for letting me into your fields, facilities and operations and giving me a firsthand look behind the scenes of agriculture. You gave me something I wasn’t expecting when I took this job. You changed my perspective on food. Agriculture can feel distant when your closest interaction with it is the produce aisle. But food is one of the few things every single one of us depends on every day. There is an entire world of people, knowledge and effort behind something we so easily place in our shopping carts. Sometimes, it takes getting your boots in the field to finally see it.
Their job isn’t simply to walk through a field and pick the biggest watermelon. They know how to read the crop and determine which fruit is actually ready to harvest. They move through the field looking for signs that most of us would never notice. Before seeing it firsthand, I didn’t even know that was a specialized job. That realization has repeated itself throughout my time at Western Growers. Agriculture is full of people who know how to do things I never knew someone had to know how to do. There are people who can look at a crop and recognize exactly when it is ready. People who can harvest and pack produce with a speed and precision that comes from experience. People managing food safety, labor, logistics and equipment. There are scientists and entrepreneurs developing technology to solve problems most consumers will never know existed. And then there are the growers themselves. Some have shared stories that go back generations. They talk about the people who came before them, the operation they are responsible for today and, in many cases, the hope of passing something meaningful on to the next generation. At the same time, they are navigating labor shortages, regulations, weather, water, rising costs, market conditions and countless other variables that can change from one season to the next. What has stayed with me most is the way they talk about it. There is pride, but rarely in a flashy way. It comes through when they talk about what they grow, the people who work alongside them and the land they are responsible for. They know how difficult the work can be, and they keep doing it anyway. It has given me a new sense of pride in my own work, too. My role is a very small piece of a much larger industry, but now I understand the people on the other side of the stories we tell, the events we promote and the work Western Growers does every day. I’ve stood in their fields. I’ve listened to their concerns. I’ve seen what they are trying to protect and what they are trying to build.
37 Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com October – December 2026
Made with FlippingBook Annual report maker