After a brief COVID related hiatus, YCDA recently marketed our agricultural sector at this year’s World Ag Expo (WAE) – the world’s largest annual agricultural exposition February 8-10 (visit https://www.worldagexpo.com/ for information about the tradeshow). YCDA was joined by several Eastern Washington Development Alliance members (EWEDA: http://eweda.org/) as well as a Department of Commerce representative to maximize our outreach and messaging.
Historically the WAE has been a significant and productive business recruitment and prospecting trip, where we help our local agricultural sector make valuable connections with companies in related industry clusters across the agricultural spectrum, from emerging technologies and equipment manufacturers to product suppliers and logistics specialists.
YCDA’s last visit to the WAE was in early 2020 before COVID changed the tradeshow landscape. We were able to tell our Yakima Valley agribusiness story to hundreds of decision makers resulting in over 30 recruitment leads and beneficial connections for our Yakima Valley companies.
This year’s effort resulted in a record 50 leads, many of which are in or related to Ag Tech, an industry segment we carefully prepared to target this year. Recruiting companies in this sector will not only benefit local grower operations with new solutions to challenging problems, but will also attract tech firms and workers to the Yakima Valley, further diversifying our ag industry while enhancing income and employment stability.
Here are just a few of the companies we connected with:
GUSS Automated sprayers (https://gussag.com/) – autonomous sprayers for a variety of orchard and row crops that increases efficiency, accuracy, and safety.
Tevel Aerobotics (https://www.tevel-tech.com/) – autonomous drone fruit picking technology.
Hectre (https://hectre.com/) – Orchard management and on-field fruit sizing/color data apps to improve logistic efficiencies.
Burro (https://burro.ai/) – collaborative farm labor robotics and platform for a variety of applications.
SunCatch, LTD (https://sun-catch.com/) Autonomous solar heating technology utilizing direct solar energy without conversion to heat buildings and supply hot water.
YCDA will update you with our progress as we continue building relationships with the companies we connected with at the WAE.
