Ways the Next Generation of Farmworkers are Preparing With Precision
March 8, 2022 
Western Growers has been involved with helping the industry tackle ag tech for several years, such as the start-ups incubated at The WG Center for Innovation and Technology, which opened in 2015.
Photo courtesy of Western Growers
The next generation of farmworkers is going to be very different from those in the past, as they will need to be able to negotiate all the new technology that is coming. To prepare, Western Growers (WG) is launching the Agtech Workforce Readiness Campaign.
Walt Duflock, WG’s Vice President of Innovation, says it is clear the decades-long labor shortage, exacerbated by the lack of immigration reform and an aging workforce, will mean growers will have to find another way to do all the required thinning, weeding, and harvesting. There is a critical need for leading-edge innovation from startups, established ag tech equipment makers, and solution providers.
But along with the development of innovative ag tech solutions, there is a growing demand for workers with a different type of skill set, Duflock says. This new labor force will require knowledge of agriculture, ag tech, agronomy, biology, data analytics, and logic to keep the industry moving forward in all sorts of ways.
“Workers will need a combination of skill sets we don’t do a good job of integrating right now,” he says. “Growers need to use more equipment, so equipment dealers, ag tech startups, they all need help. All of them are telling us the kids coming out are great, but they could really use people who can diagnose and solve ag tech challenges.”
To launch the program, WG has received a $750,000 grant from the California Department of Food and Agriculture’s (CDFA) 2021 Specialty Crop Block Grant Program to develop and implement a curriculum to provide California college students with best-in-class ag tech training.
Besides the 2,750 students that the program will assist, the grant will allow the specialized training of 330 Next-Gen Ag Workforce professors within four years of launch. Curriculum development will begin immediately and be fully implemented by June 2025.
“Western Growers is excited to work with CDFA and California’s two-year and four-year colleges and universities to build strong, cross-disciplinary programs to help the next generation of farmworkers,” Duflock says. “This grant gives us a chance to create new programs statewide to develop the key skills students need to work in ag tech innovation — from engineering, to agronomy, to biology, to computer science. This collaboration between WG members, partners, and California educators will ensure growers and ag tech companies get access to the most highly skilled graduates in the nation.”
Duflock says the effort is necessary because the next generation of farmworkers will have to look very different from the past. Farming is changing so rapidly, becoming more complex, that new skills are needed.
“You need to be part engineer, part computer scientist, part agronomist, part biologist,” he says. “All of that skill set is in different (college) departments. Our view is to take the grower perspective and make that the center point.”
To begin, they plan to build modules for two-year ag tech programs. Of the state’s 118 community colleges, fully half have ag programs, says Duflock, which will aid in the launch.
“Our whole goal is to get as many modules in place as possible, and then we just need to share and get blessed by (legislators in) Sacramento. Some (modules) will be coming out in the fall of this year, but most are planned for next year,” he says. “We’re starting with educators, with only limited students initially. Many big growers are in support — you’d have ready employers as soon as the kids are done.”
The second part of the plan is to implement programs at four-year universities. The plan is for the first workers to be prepared with the base knowledge from the two-year programs. Building on that, the four-year programs will have further education in fields such as engineering, so graduates will be prepared to work on ag tech start-ups, for example.
“We need to get the modules going, get the teachers trained, but we also need to get the students done at scale,” he says. “Not just the three ag universities, (Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo, Fresno State, and University of California, Davis) but a dozen.”
Assuming they can get the plan accomplished, Duflock was asked what the ag landscape will look like in California in 2030.
“If we get more water infrastructure, and California doesn’t add more regulations, we will see a lot more robots in the field,” he says. “Labor is not there even with H-2A. We need more robot manufacturers — labor contractors will be adding robots. We need labor that can solve robotics problems, among others.”
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