COVER STORY FIELD OF DREAMS How T&A and The Reservoir Connect Growers to Agtech By Emily Gengler, Executive Assistant to the President and CEO
Brian Antle from Tanimura & Antle and Danny Bernstein
When Danny Bernstein steps outside every day, he launches into nonstop meetings, phone calls, emails, conversations with startups, investors, growers, partners, media and more. His view of this day-to-day bedlam—or symphony of innovation and California agriculture—is one of gratitude and purpose-driven satisfaction. Just three years ago, Bernstein was deep inside Google at a nondescript fluorescent-lit desk. The terrible lighting in his office was less the problem than the real-world impact, or rather lack of impact, he found himself making. There was “an abundance of resources and a lack of real problems to solve,” he said. As CEO and Managing Partner of The Reservoir, where agtech innovation meets dedicated farmland in California, he is firmly planted in the inverse. Though an accomplished tech operator from Silicon Valley with a pedigree that includes executive roles at Google and Microsoft, Bernstein is able to keep any initial skepticism from his new partners—farmers, growers and operators in Western agriculture—at bay. A San Francisco native, Bernstein graduated from the University of California, Davis. As a Political Science undergraduate student working “20 hours a week for three and a half years,” he recalls being mesmerized by his friends in the Agribusiness Economics major, one of the school’s most rigorous
courses: a memorable “180 units.” The obvious import of this program, one of America’s finest in agricultural economics, formed the basis of Danny’s respect for, and interest in, rural concerns. He never stopped searching for what he considered “the real California.” Now, his lifelong nascent interest in agriculture and
16 Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com July | August 2025
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