The holiday season is getting closer. Grocery lists will soon get longer, kitchens will get busier, and vegetables like celery, lettuce, potatoes, carrots, and onions will make their way into millions of holiday meals. But this year, there is another number worth watching before we get to the checkout line: the price of diesel. If you live in California, you have probably already noticed it. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, California on-highway diesel

A bunch of celery sitting in your refrigerator looks simple enough. It is clean, trimmed, relatively uniform, and ready to eat. We rarely stop to think about what happened before it reached the produce aisle, or how different that same celery looked when it was still growing in the field. The journey actually begins months before we see it at the grocery store. Celery has to be planted, irrigated, monitored, and grown until it reaches the right maturity for harvest. Even when

The journey from farm to grocery store is often described as a straightforward supply chain: crops are grown, harvested, packed, transported, and eventually placed on store shelves. In reality, the path is much less predictable. A significant amount of produce grown for the fresh market may never reach a grocery store, even when the crop itself is healthy and usable. There are many reasons this can happen. Market prices can change between planting and harvest, demand can shif

From a distance, a vegetable field can look remarkably uniform. The beds are straight, the rows appear evenly spaced, and thousands of plants seem to follow the same pattern. But anyone who has spent enough time in the field knows that this uniformity disappears quickly once you get closer. Even within the same field, conditions can change significantly from one row to the next. Plants may be larger in one section and smaller in another. Spacing can vary, leaves can overlap,

Weather has always been one of the biggest variables in agriculture. For vegetable growers, a change in weather doesn’t simply affect what happens in the field. It can influence labor schedules, equipment availability, harvest timing, transportation, packing and ultimately how quickly fresh produce gets to market. That is why El Niño is once again getting attention across the agricultural industry. El Niño occurs when ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific become warmer t

When people think about harvest automation, the first question is usually straightforward: can the machine successfully harvest the crop? It makes sense that so much attention is placed on this moment. Cutting is one of the most visible parts of harvesting, and for many specialty crops, it is also one of the most labor-intensive. But once you spend enough time working in real fields, it quickly becomes clear that making the cut is only one part of a much larger operation. Aft

Every few months, a new agricultural robot makes headlines promising a future where machines can harvest crops entirely on their own. It is an exciting vision. Autonomous machines navigating fields, artificial intelligence making decisions, and farms operating with little human involvement all sound like the next chapter of agriculture. But spend a day on a commercial vegetable farm, and you quickly realize the reality is far more complex. Experienced tractor operators, harve

For many people, farming begins at sunrise and ends before dark. In reality, some of the most productive hours in agriculture happen long after the sun goes down. Across California and other major vegetable growing regions, nighttime harvesting has become an increasingly common practice. It's not simply about extending the workday. Harvesting after sunset helps growers improve product quality, protect workers, and operate more efficiently during the hottest months of the year

In harvesting, speed gets most of the attention. How many acres can a crew cover in a day? How many heads can a machine cut per minute? How quickly can a field be completed? These questions matter, but speed alone does not determine whether a harvest operation is successful. A crew or machine may move quickly through a field, but if cut height varies, produce is damaged, or the packing line cannot keep up, that speed can create more problems than it solves. What matters most

When people talk about the cost of harvesting fresh produce, the conversation usually begins and ends with wages. It's an understandable assumption. Harvesting is one of the most labor-intensive parts of farming, and payroll is a major expense. But for growers, the true economics of harvest labor extend far beyond an hourly rate. Every head of romaine lettuce, stalk of celery, or Napa cabbage that reaches a grocery store represents dozens of decisions, countless hours of work

Walk through the produce aisle at any grocery store and you'll see stacks of fresh lettuce waiting for customers. It looks simple enough. Pick one up, put it in your cart, and head home. What most people don't see is everything that had to happen before that lettuce made it onto the shelf. Every head of lettuce represents months of planning, careful growing, skilled labor, and a race against time. From the day a seed is planted until the day it reaches a grocery store, dozens

For decades, California has been known as America's agricultural powerhouse. The state produces over a third of the nation's vegetables and nearly three-quarters of its fruits and nuts by value. But its true significance extends well beyond production volume. California has quietly become the world's leading laboratory for specialty crop innovation, where growers, researchers, engineers, and technology companies work side by side to solve some of agriculture's most difficult

If you've walked through a grocery store recently, you've probably noticed that vegetables aren't getting any cheaper. From lettuce and celery to broccoli and leafy greens, retail prices have steadily increased over the past several years. It's easy to assume that growers must be benefiting from those higher prices. After all, if consumers are paying more, shouldn't farmers be earning more too? Unfortunately, that's rarely how agriculture works. Many vegetable growers are fac

The agricultural robotics industry loves to talk about technology. Artificial intelligence. Machine vision. Autonomous navigation. Advanced sensors. Proprietary algorithms. While these innovations are important, they are rarely the first questions growers ask when evaluating a new piece of equipment. After countless conversations with growers across California, Australia, and beyond, we've learned something simple: most growers don't want more technology. They want fewer prob

For years, conversations about labor shortages in agriculture have focused on a single question: How do we find more workers? But the data and conversations happening across the industry suggest that may be the wrong question. The reality is that labor challenges are no longer a temporary disruption or seasonal inconvenience. They are becoming a structural part of modern agriculture. Growers are navigating rising labor costs, workforce availability concerns, increasing regula

As labor availability becomes more unpredictable and operating costs continue to rise, more growers are exploring automation. That trend makes sense. Technology has the potential to help farms improve efficiency, reduce labor pressure, and bring more consistency to harvest operations. For some growers, one option is to build equipment internally. After all, growers know their crops, fields, crews, and harvest challenges better than anyone. Agriculture has always been an indus

For a long time, agricultural technology was often viewed as something reserved for the largest farming operations. When people thought about automation, robotics, precision equipment, or AI powered systems, they usually imagined massive corporate farms with enormous budgets, dedicated engineering teams, and thousands of acres under management. Smaller and mid size growers were often seen as observers rather than participants in the AgTech conversation. But across agriculture

When people outside agriculture think about harvesting vegetables, they often picture a straightforward process. A crew enters the field, cuts the crop, packs it, and moves on to the next row. But for growers and field operations teams, harvest is rarely that simple. Behind every successful harvest day is a constant battle against small inefficiencies that quietly impact labor productivity, operational flow, product quality, and timing. In manual harvest operations, some of t

When consumers think about a successful harvest season, they usually picture full grocery shelves, fresh vegetables, and strong farm output. But inside the industry, a “good season” means something very different. For growers, a good harvest season often means surviving one of the most operationally intense periods of the year without major disruptions. Because in modern agriculture, growing the crop is only part of the challenge. Harvesting it efficiently, consistently, and

In California’s Central Coast, where rows of lettuce, broccoli, and leafy greens stretch across thousands of acres, a quiet shift is underway. It’s not about what is being grown, but how it’s being harvested. For decades, vegetable farming has depended on large crews moving through fields by hand, picking at the right moment to preserve quality and maximize yield. That model is now under pressure. Labor is harder to find, more expensive to maintain, and increasingly unpredict