DEL MAR, CA — Larry Cox of Lawrence Cox Ranches in Brawley, CA, was elected chairman of the board of Western Growers Association at the group’s 90th annual meeting, held Nov. 8-11, here, in northern San Diego County.

Cox, who has served as senior vice chair for the past year, succeeded Vic Smith of JV Smith Cos. in Yuma, AZ. His election was confirmed at the Nov. 9 board meeting, where he was joined by the other officers for the 2015-16 year.

Serving as senior vice chair will be Sammy Duda of Duda Farm Fresh Foods Inc. The other officers are Craig Reade of Bonipak Produce Co., vice chairman; Carol Chandler of Chandler Farms, treasurer; and Garland Reiter of Reiter Affiliated Cos., executive secretary.Incoming Chairman of the Board Larry Cox of Lawrence Cox Ranches received the gavel from 2015 Chairman Vic Smith of JV Smith Cos.

The three-day event was loaded with activities including a plethora of educational events, as well as social gatherings and networking opportunities.

Controversial issues dominated, with a water seminar focusing on water rights and a GMO workshop discussing the potential opportunities and obstacles in that realm. In addition, there was a Shark Tank-type technology seminar, a Top Chef demonstration and several provocative keynote speeches.

Labor in question
At the Nov. 9 Major Luncheon, outgoing Chairman Smith discussed his year at the helm, including both successes and what he called the “most pressing issue we face: labor, or specifically, the lack of labor.”

Smith said there is a critical shortage of workers of at least 10-20 percent on a weekly basis in the West. He noted that production agriculture needs more than 400,000 farmworkers on an average basis, so the chronic shortage is in the neighborhood of 40,000 to 80,000 people.

He does not believe that immigration reform is imminent, so he thinks agriculture employers must look elsewhere. He said western agricultural should make a more concerted effort to use the Department of Labor’s H2A program, but he realizes that would be a bureaucratic nightmare, as government agencies are already overrun with H2A applications and requests for another 40,000 workers would mean a 30 percent increase in their workload.  

“They don’t have the bandwidth to deal with current applications,” he said.  

While it’s a conundrum, Smith advocated for WGA to get involved and play a major role in this arena. “We are going to have to pay attention, do a better job and get much better results.”

On the same dais was keynote speaker Dave Evans, the former chief futurist with Cisco and currently the founder of Stringify, a company involved in the Internet of Things.

Evans wowed the audience with his look at the future of agriculture, where he sees vertical farming and the 3-D printing of food at home. He relayed that the world is changing at breakneck speed and said that 95 percent of all that will be known in 50 years has yet to be discovered.

To illustrate, he pointed to how computing has changed the world and said that since the first computer was invented in 1946, the computing speed of that machine, which took up 18,000 square feet and its cost in today’s dollars was $4.4 billion, is the same as a chip in a singing greeting card of today.

Evans believes farming, as well as virtually everything else, is going to change dramatically over the next few decades. He does not believe today’s methods will be competitive or relevant even over the next generation or two. In fact, he said “robots will be the farmers of the future,” noting that robots will be physically and mentally superior to humans by about 2032.

GMOs explored
Three panelists discussed the science and perception around the genetically modified organism issue in a workshop held Nov. 9. Alison Van Eenennaam of the University of California-Davis gave an easy-to-understand scientific view of the GMO debate. Her basic point was that there is no scientific basis to ban this research and breeding technique. In fact, she argued that the phrase behind the GMO acronym has no real meaning. Instead, it is genetic engineering, also defined as recombinant DNA technology, which is actually the technique that anti-GMO activists are against. She noted that virtually every scientific group in the world has the same opinion of genetic engineering, which is that it is a very safe tool and offers loads of opportunities.  

Van Eenennaam said it is the extreme cost of the regulatory hurdles that is chiefly responsible for stifling research on the technology, especially from public land grant college, which typically have been responsible for advances in agriculture. She marvels at the inconsistencies in a public and regulatory community that will accept the technology in medicine (insulin) and some crops (papayas, soybeans, corn, cotton and sugar beets) but not in others.

The two other panelists represented the consumer viewpoint and both argued that it is a matter of perception rather than reality. Phil Lempert, also known as the Supermarket Guru, and Michael Dimock of Roots of Change both believe that getting consumers to accept GMO food is a very high mountain to scale. However, Dimock believes that accepting GMO labeling in the marketplace would diffuse the issue.

Water rights
During a water rights workshop on Nov. 9, five panelists discussed a variety of issues around that topic, but the basic consensus is that water rights for agriculture are under attack and in jeopardy.

Judge Oliver Wanger, who presided over many water rights cases in a U.S. District Court over the past 20 years before he retired, basically reported that federal laws, including the Endangered Species Act, make no water rights safe, no matter how old or solid.

However another speaker, attorney Thomas Berliner, does not actually believe that there will be an official reshuffling of long-held rights. California water rights were officially established in 1914, over 100 years ago. Berliner believes there are too many stakeholders, including the major cities in California, which will put up a huge battle against any official change in law. But the consensus is that concepts such as “reasonable use” and “public trust” will be invoked to shuffle or reallocate rights during periods of drought.

Another speaker, Grady Gammage, who mostly represents real estate developers in Arizona, spoke about the forward thinking that policymakers in that state enacted as long as 40 years ago to deal with water issues. He believes Arizona is in a great position to have water even in down years, largely because it has banked 8.5 million acre feet in ground water reservoirs over the last many years.

Varney highlights PAC luncheon
During the annual Political Action Committee lunch, Fox business reporter and television personality Stuart Varney’s discussed several issue of interest.

He gave the audience his view of what he sees as currently bad economic times. He said the crisis of 2008 ushered in an era of government programs and spending that has stifled economic growth. He is a proponent of the return to freer reign on capitalism to promote growth and solve some of the current economic problems. With a reduction in personal and corporate taxes, Varney said economic growth could be in the 4 percent range per annum, which would create opportunities for all classes of Americans.

He also lamented the declining birth rates all over the world, which he believes will lead to further economic troubles, as fewer and fewer people in the workforce will have to take care of more and more senior citizens.

However, Varney said the influx of immigrants in the United States has helped our population avoid that issue. While a majority of people all over Europe and Japan will be over 65 years old by 2020, the U.S. population in that age category will be less than 30 percent.

New technologies recognized
Still another workshop session had seven innovative companies presenting new technologies and vying for the industry’s attention. A panel of judges and the audience picked two winners, each of which will receive a year membership in WGA and exposure to the membership.

The judges picked a firm called GioVisual Analytics, which uses many different inputs, including aerial imagery and ground-based sensors and photos, to produce reports that serve as early warning signs and monitoring systems for crops.

Similarly, the audience liked TerraAvion, which is offering a real-time, aerial imagery service for agriculture on a weekly basis. By getting a birds-eye view of the crops in multiple wavelengths, and color coded, growers can use the images to better manage those crops.