The fourth annual FIRA USA, a major international agricultural robotics conference, opened Tuesday in Woodland with calls from Western Growers and the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources to accelerate automation in specialty crop production as labor costs rise and field trials expand.
Western Growers Vice President of Innovation Walt Duflock said the event — cofounded by his organization and UC ANR — has one purpose: to help keep farmers in California.
“We started FIRA four years ago in Fresno, went to Salinas, been at Woodland twice — with one goal: remind people how much labor challenges are hitting growers and help them understand that without automation, it gets really, really hard for growers to continue to farm in California,” Duflock told reporters.
He noted California growers spend roughly $16.3 billion a year on farm labor — about 850 million hours — and only a small fraction of that work has been automated.
“Until we get that number up, we continue to have to increase international farmworker usage,” Duflock said. “That usage comes at $30 an hour. Other places charge us less. We need automation to get there.”
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FIRA, which runs through Thursday, features field demos, panels and exhibits from global equipment firms and startups developing autonomous sprayers, weeding robots and orchard platforms. Duflock said Western Growers is scaling up field trials for both robotics and biological alternatives, citing case studies with laser weeding and carbon robotics. He previewed new grower-led capital initiatives aimed at tackling harvest automation — which he called “the hardest ag-tech solution on the planet.”
UC ANR Chief Innovation Officer Gabe Youtsey framed automation as vital to the nation’s long-term resilience.
“California and specialty crop agriculture in the western U.S. is really critical to the U.S. food supply, and we want to see it here for many generations,” said Youtsey.
UC’s new California Ag Tech Innovation Network, unveiled at FIRA, will link investors, growers, universities and regional development groups to expand the state’s ag-tech ecosystem.
“The state has invested about $30 million in the last six months to help build this network,” Youtsey said, adding that the UC is working with community colleges to train Spanish-speaking farmworkers in automation and data technologies.
“This format of FIRA USA — bringing growers, tech companies, corporates, scientists and regulators together — is exactly what this sector needs,” he said. “It’s going to take government, industry and science coming together in new ways to keep California agriculture strong.”
