More than a dozen USDA officials visited the Western Growers Center for Innovation and Technology in Salinas, Calif., this week to meet with representatives of startups using the facility.
The 14-member delegation included Bill Richmond, chief of the agency's U.S. Domestic Hemp Production Program, and Robin Chilton, director of the Standards Division of the USDA's Specialty Crops Program, according to a news release.
The group met April 26 with Solare Holdings to discuss the hemp program and talked with entrepreneurs from a half-dozen other WGCIT member companies, according to Western Growers. For information about the visit, click here.
The center is a technology incubator aimed at bringing innovative entrepreneurs together with farmers to facilitate creative solutions to the biggest challenges facing agriculture. Western Growers represents produce farmers in Arizona, California and Colorado.