Event contact
Ryan Comella
rcomella@foundationfar.org
The Almond Board of California, International Fresh Produce Association and Western Growers Association, in partnership with FFAR, hosted the Advancing Cross-Cutting Research for U.S. Specialty Crops workshop in Davis, CA on July 11, 2024. This workshop brought together organizations representing the spectrum of specialty crops grown within the U.S. to identify a set of cross-cutting research targets that could be addressed collaboratively through a public-private funded research program.
Fruits, vegetables and tree nuts are grown on nearly 200,000 farms across the country, with more than $60 billion in sales and accounting for more than 25% of all food and feed crop sales. The vast diversity of specialty food crops mirrors the diversity of benefits and challenges for each production system; accordingly, research efforts typically focus on advances in one or a few crops. The identification of cross-crop research targets presents an opportunity to have an outsized impact across this agriculture sector.
Small group discussions touched on a range of topics including but not limited to:
- Breeding tools and traits
- Soil health and biologicals
- Precision agriculture and automation
- Water usage and quality
- Nutrition and food as medicine
- Rural connectivity
- Climate mitigation
- Life cycle analysis
This was a closed event.