Walt Duflock, senior vice president of Western Growers, doesn’t have “ag tech bouncer” in his title, but maybe he should. Duflock shares some of what makes his role at Western Growers unique on the latest episode of “The Packer Podcast.”
Duflock says his role and Western Growers’ role is to help ag tech startups on the journey from idea to real-world impacts. He estimates there’s more than 2,000 startups in the ag tech and biologicals space, and there’s about 2,300 members of Western Growers.
“There’s no way that any of them can take calls from all 2,000 vendors,” he says.
He says ag labor in the state of California costs growers $16.3 billion a year at around 850 million hours of farm labor. And two-thirds of that 850 million hour is harvest, which is a challenge to automate.
“We work hard to get the one-third of the non-harvest, the weeding, thinning, planting, spraying out there at scale,” he says.
So, Duflock says it’s his job to help these startups understand what’s needed every step in the development of a new innovation.
“Our role is to kind of be the chief coordinator, the general manager, if you will, of the space and help those startups understand: What do you need to know at the start? What do you need to know when you go into trials? What do you need to go that first time you talk to the grower? And what do you need to show that grower in terms of economics? That shows them your tool can come in and help them, not just by doing the job, but by doing the job in economics that work for them,” he says.
Duflock, a fifth-generation farmer with more than 30 years’ experience in Silicon Valley startups (including eBay), says ag tech is the toughest space for startups to operate in.
“No space requires more patience than ag tech, and that’s the one thing startups don’t all get a lot of,” he says. “If you took venture capital money and you got venture capital board members breathing down your neck to deliver, deliver, deliver, it can be really tough. So, the first thing we tell startups is listen, play for the long game and build a product that is going to do the job no matter how long it takes.”
Because with specialty crop agriculture being such a tight-knit community, he says, growers will talk.
“Inevitably, it’s not always the stuff that does work that gets shared with everybody, widely,” he says. “It’s quite often the stuff that didn’t work. So, they’ll warn their friends off of taking some bad pass, but they may hold the good stuff a little closer to their chest.”
Duflock says he coaches ag tech startups to tailor the message to the audience, whether that’s a grower or an investor. He says startups need to understand that when discussing innovations with growers, it’s about improving economics and experience working with growers of a similar type of operation. And startups need a healthy dose of patience.
“That’s the trick for startups, is we’re one of the slower-moving spaces, so people just have to adjust their time frames and expectations on that side,” he says.
One thing Duflock encourages growers and startups to do is focus on the economics. He tells growers it’s important to discuss their economics to make sure the innovations would truly make a difference to their bottom line. And, Duflock says he tells startups the same thing, if they’re not able to show exactly how the economics of the solution pans out for the grower.
“[I] tell the startups, look, if you can’t get to the level of detail, you’re not there,” he says. “You’re not ready to sell it, you’re ready to share your machine. You’re ready to demo, but you’re not ready to trial or offer a sale to anybody. So, keeping both sides focused on economics has been one of the big wins the last couple of years.”
