UPDATES FROM THE WGCIT The Western Growers Center for Innovation and Technology was created to link Western Growers members with innovators in the agtech space. Below are news updates from the Center’s startups:
Carbon Robotics is the leader in physical AI for agriculture, helping farmers become more profitable and sustainable. Its flagship product, the LaserWeeder™, is the world’s leading commercial laser weeding system, with hundreds of units operated by farmers in 15 countries. LaserWeeder combines computer vision, AI, robotics and high-powered lasers to identify weeds and destroy them with sub-millimeter precision—no herbicides, hand labor or soil disturbance required. Growers cut weed control costs by up to 80 percent and increase crop yields by 5–50 percent, with payback in one to three years. The system is powered by Carbon AI’s Large Plant Model (LPM), trained on 150 million labeled plants, and can start weeding any crop or field in minutes. The company’s second product is Carbon Autonomy, the most dependable tractor autonomy solution, combining a tractor retrofit kit, autonomy software and 24/7 remote supervision for real-time interventions when needed. Growers use it to extend working hours, solve operator shortages and increase tractor utilization. In August 2026, Carbon Robotics launched the Carbon Autonomy Ready program, with Great Plains Manufacturing as its first implement partner. Meet FreshAhead, a software that finally speaks ag. Most agriculture software asks companies to reshape their operation to fit the system, forcing standardized workflows onto businesses that rarely run the same way twice. Founded in 2018 on the idea of software without compromise, the FreshAhead platform is built to do the opposite, molding itself around how an operation already works rather than making the operation adapt to the software. FreshAhead software connects field, facility and delivery into one real-time system, flagging issues as they happen instead of after the fact. Customers using FreshAhead have seen yield accuracy climb from 60 percent to 90 percent, completed full season plans in as little as 24 hours instead of months, managed more than 40 overnight schedule changes without disruption and cut dumps and disposals by 90 percent in their first year on the platform. That same philosophy shows up in food safety and traceability. Instead of a separate compliance module, FreshAhead builds traceability directly into the same real-time system customers already use to plan and ship, so a product’s path from field to final delivery can be verified without ever leaving the platform. FreshAhead is still built around a simple premise: agricultural operations should not have to change to fit the software. That is the whole difference. Software built around the operation, not the other way around. Learn more at freshahead.com. HeavyConnect, the compliance and workforce data platform used by fresh produce operations across the U.S., is releasing a new Onboarding Module in January 2027. The new feature lets growers and FLCs onboard new employees directly inside HeavyConnect—the same platform they already use for TimeKeeper Time & Attendance, Employee Training Records, Worker Safety checklists and digital compliance binder management. Instead of paper packets and disconnected systems, new hires are brought into the platform from day one. Their records, training completions and safety acknowledgments flow into the same data infrastructure that powers their ongoing compliance documentation. For operations already on HeavyConnect, this closes the loop from hire to harvest—one platform, one record, no re-entry. Learn more at heavyconnect.com Before you cut, you tell your buyer what you can deliver. What is that number based on? Innoptech’s VegForecast gives lettuce growers a pre-harvest inventory that is counted, not estimated: plants counted one by one, marketable or not, over up to 700 times the area a walking crew can cover, twice a week in the weeks that matter, right up to the day before you cut. Your pilot flies; counts, head size and weed maps reach every team within the hour. Everything else leaves the field before harvest; we are still counting. Now in its third season on commercial lettuce farms, Innoptech set up in Salinas this summer and follows the crop to Yuma for the desert season. What you buy is a number you can check: what gets measured, against what and who judges it, agreed before the first flight. Planting the desert this fall? Pick the block you trust least and email info@innoptech.com with the subject line “Fly one of my blocks.” Before the first flight, we agree on how you’ll check the count. We are in Yuma all season, and at Desert Difference on December 9-10. A block harvested without a count is a season of data that does not come back.
Carbon Robotics
FreshAhead
HeavyConnect
Innoptech
60 Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com October – December 2026
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