For Wells Fargo’s Patty Juarez and Scott Iverson, navigating the operational friction and economic volatility facing today’s fresh produce supply chain isn’t an abstract financial exercise — it is a hands-on dedication to an industry where weather, labor and market dynamics can shift overnight.
As executive vice president of external affairs, Juarez brings a deeply personal perspective to corporate lending, having grown up in Mexico and California’s Imperial Valley where reliable capital determined whether families could meet farm payrolls. Alongside her, Scott Iverson, managing director and market executive for Wells Fargo’s Food & Agribusiness specialty group, provides the structural blueprint for how produce operators navigate high-stakes capital decisions across the supply chain.
As Wells Fargo steps into center stage as a sponsor and participant at The Avocado Conference, Nov. 18-20, 2026, in San Diego, the two executives share a unified vision: combining long-term relationship banking with customized financial architecture to help grower-packer-shippers, retailers and stakeholders across the supply chain to build resilient businesses through every market cycle.
Personally Invested in Produce
Juarez’s entry into agribusiness finance was shaped long before she reached the executive suites at Wells Fargo.
“I’m a girl that grew up in Imperial Valley, so produce is very strong in my family from either picking the crops all the way to buying them at the grocery store,” Juarez recalls. “I was born in Mexico, where my dad worked for an American company on the Mexican side of the border, and access to capital was not something that was reliable or affordable in our country. It was a last resort and, frankly, sometimes not even a possibility. From a young age, I learned that businesses need money to operate.”
That early reality for Juarez underpins how she views Wells Fargo’s relationship-first approach, especially when growers and shippers navigate turbulent economic conditions.
“I know one of the most important things at Wells Fargo is that we need to be consistent through cycles and uncertainty and the good times and the bad times,” she says. “A lot of our clients have been with us not just years but decades because we have been a consistent partner to them through the good and the bad. ... For most people right now with the economy kind of sputtering, there may be a little bit of a doomsday feeling. But what we’re seeing is that the fundamentals are still good and when we look portfolio wide as a company, there’s reason for optimism.”
Structuring Stability: Liquidity, Risk and Capital Allocation
Where Juarez focuses on institutional consistency, Iverson zeroes in on the operational mechanics of financial stability. For produce companies, risk management requires preparing for multiple variables simultaneously.
“For me, financial stability in food and agriculture starts with liquidity and flexibility,” Iverson says. “These businesses operate with risks that are often outside of their control, including weather, labor availability, input costs, commodity prices and changing customer demand. The challenge is rarely managing any one of those factors. It is being prepared when several of them move against you at the same time.”
Because cash flows vary sharply across the supply chain, Iverson stresses that financial solutions cannot be one-size-fits-all.
“A grower has a very different cash flow and risk profile than a packer or distributor, even when they ultimately handle the same product,” Iverson explains. “We aren’t trying to eliminate volatility. Agriculture has always been cyclical. The goal is to make sure a difficult year doesn’t force a good company into making a bad long-term decision.”
Growth by Design
When agribusiness leaders consider expanding acreage, adding cold storage or upgrading technology, Iverson advises taking a disciplined approach to capital expenditure.
“I would start with a simple question: What problem are we trying to solve? Growth by itself isn’t necessarily value creation,” he says. “More acres, more volume or more capacity only make sense if the incremental return justifies the capital and risk.”
Instead of chasing volume for its own sake, Iverson urges operators to evaluate internal constraints and explore efficiency improvements.
“Sometimes the better investment is not expansion,” Iverson says. “Improving automation, throughput, packout, cold storage, water efficiency or labor productivity within an existing operation may generate a better return with less execution risk. There are also times when maintaining liquidity and waiting is the best capital allocation decision. Ultimately, growth has to earn its capital. We want to invest based on sustainable economics, not assume that a particularly strong season will continue indefinitely.”
To maintain liquidity through these growth cycles, Iverson highlights a fundamental financing principle: Match the financing with the useful life and cash generation of the asset while protecting liquidity for the operating business.
“Real estate is generally a long-duration asset,” he says. “Equipment should typically be financed over a period consistent with its productive life, while revolving credit should primarily support working capital needs such as inventory, receivables and seasonality.
“Where companies can get into trouble is using too much short-term liquidity to fund long-term investments,” Iverson continues. “A new facility or packing line may be a very good investment, but not if paying for it leaves the company short of liquidity when it needs to purchase product, make payroll or carry customer receivables.”
Iverson also cautions that the best financing structure isn’t necessarily the one with the lowest cost on Day 1.
“It’s the one that continues to work when something doesn’t go according to plan,” he says.
Managing Cross-Border and Trade Exposure
For produce exporters and importers navigating international supply chains, risk management requires looking beyond standardized tools to evaluate actual business risk.
“I would start with the underlying exposure rather than with a particular financial product,” Iverson says. “What is the company actually trying to protect against? Is it customer payment risk, supplier liquidity, currency movements, interest rates or some combination of those risks?”
Once that core vulnerability is identified, operators can structure an effective risk toolkit using letters of credit, documentary collections, trade financing or foreign-exchange and interest-rate risk management.
“For food and agriculture companies in particular, I think the objective should be protecting the economics of the operating business,” Iverson adds. “Risk management should help reduce unwanted volatility in cash flow and margins. It shouldn’t become a speculative activity of its own.”
Connecting Community and Industry
For Wells Fargo, participating in The Avocado Conference serves as an intentional platform to blend financial advisory with industry engagement.
“We’re always looking at our business acquisition goals ... ensuring we sponsor the type of events where there’s demand and a need,” Juarez explains. “The Avocado Conference allows us to connect with an existing base of customers in the avocado industry or in related businesses, as well as reach prospective clients that find this conference of value.”
Wells Fargo’s involvement in agriculture is built on a long-standing foundation. And for Juarez personally, agriculture has been central to her journey at the bank for over three decades.
“Wells Fargo has been committed to the ag space since my first years here at the bank,” says Juarez, who marks almost 32 years with Wells Fargo this coming January. “We’re a strong player in the space and we want to continue to be a strong player, and so participating in industry vertical conferences and events that allow us to differentiate ourselves in terms of what we’re bringing to the table to our clients is important to us.”
Beyond financial products, Juarez views external engagement as a bridge between corporate leadership, market stakeholders and local business ecosystems.
“Connecting with our community is one of the things we do best,” Juarez stresses. “Everything we do has our customers at the center. Everything we do is to try to bring our clients resources, programs and organizations that can help them in their own career goals or their own company goals.”
For Juarez and her team in external engagement, success is measured by the tangible growth and partnerships forged on the networking floor.
“Participating in conferences that add value to our clients and help them in their business objectives is very important to us,” Juarez says. “Helping them network with the right companies and maybe find additional businesses with which to connect is the best part of my job. When I connect people in industries that have a need for each other, and then they start doing business together — that is something we take very seriously.”
