It’s back to school season! Luckily, busy Moms and Dads can breathe a little easier when packing their kids’ lunches by including Taylor Farms tasty, nutritious snack trays.
Our wholesome snack trays come in a variety of choices for every day of the week, including veggies, fruit, proteins, and ranch dip, all in one simple package that fits nicely into any lunchbox. The tray options include:
Healthy Harvest, with apples, sweet carrots, premium cheddar cheese and almonds
Little Dipper, with carrots, crisp celery, waffle pretzels and juicy tomatoes
Lovin’ Veggies, with carrots, celery and tomatoes
Protein Punch, with cheddar cheese, almonds, and broccoli
Pure Veggie, with organic carrots, broccoli and tomatoes
Better Cheddar, with waffle pretzels, cheddar cheese, carrots, tomatoes and broccoli
Healthy lunches help kids do better in class. Past studies have examined the eating habits of school children and determined that children who eat more fruits, vegetables, and protein, and fewer calories from fat, perform better on literacy tests compared to children with a high-fat, high-salt diet.
“Taylor Farms is proud to be part of an industry dedicated to supplying convenient, fresh snacks,” said Brian Modena, a nutritious snack and cut vegetable product manager, Taylor Farms Retail. “We’re committed to helping increase students’ consumption of fruits and vegetables to develop healthier eating habits for a lifetime.”
We wish you all a happy and healthy back to school season!
This summer marks 2 years since a massive new worker rumbled onto the field to harvest celery for Taylor Farms – a marvel of mechanical technology called the Automated Celery Harvester.
After a few modifications since 2014, the harvester now cuts 13,000 pounds of celery per hour and drops the product into trailers for transport to processing at its very freshest. By comparison, it used to take 20 workers an hour to harvest that many pounds by hand.
“Two of the primary reasons we developed the machine is that hand-harvesting celery is very difficult and hand crews also lay the product on the ground after its been cut, which is a food safety problem,” said Dave Offerdahl, Taylor Farms’ Director of Ag Engineering, Harvest Automation.
As the harvester moves through the celery field, the stalks are cut by hardened stainless steel blades that are adjusted automatically by a sensor that follows the contour of the ground. An operator in the enclosed cab does the fine tuning, Offerdahl said. A single machine handles all the company’s present celery harvesting needs.
Offerdahl said it took about a year to develop the harvester and since launch, modifications have been made to the blades, the ground sensor wheel, and how the crew handles the product on the trailer after harvest .
“Our investment in automated harvesting not only decreases our harvest costs, but also lays the foundation of the future for the industry,” said Offerdahl.
See Taylor Farms’ Automated Celery Harvester in action:
It’s America Recycles Day! Team Taylor has been working all year to support and improve recycling and sustainability efforts, including setting Zero Waste goals for our facilities.
Together with our friends at Salinas Valley Recycles and Measure to Improve, Taylor Farms hosted a recycling event at our Gonzales facility last week. The event was held on Employee Appreciation Day to celebrate the hard work of Team Taylor towards our Zero Waste goals.
Just in time for America Recycles Day, the team at this facility has surpassed their original diversion goal of 90%, and are now on their way to a 93% diversion rate each month.
Over 1,000 employees were onsite to participate in recycling games, with opportunities to earn sustainable prizes and learn more about Taylor Farms goals of reducing waste at the plants.
Let us know what you’re doing to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle by using the hashtags #americarecyclesday, #berecycled, and #TaylorFarms on Twitter or Instagram.
We want to congratulate Mark Cisneros, head coach of the Alisal High School Varsity Men’s Soccer Team, for being awarded this season’s KSBW Golden Whistle Award! Mark has been coaching at Alisal High School in Salinas, California, for nine years.
The team is one of the top ranked men’s varsity soccer teams teams in the nation, and this past December they were invited to Los Angeles to play against other top teams in California. At first, the team wasn’t sure they would be able to go, but Coach Cisneros rallied to raise enough money for them to travel to this competition, giving the players the experience of playing outside of their local area — which many of them had never done.
These games were also a great opportunity for the players to get exposure to recruiters, college scouts, and university coaches from Southern California schools who otherwise would not see the Alisal Trojans in action. Since neither J.V. or Varsity lost a single match while in Los Angeles, it was a very successful trip for all. In fact, Coach Cisneros said that the San Diego State University coach was in attendance and was very interested in a couple of the Alisal players!
While in Los Angeles, the team toured the UCLA campus, which helped expose them to the possible future of a college degree and soccer career. Coach Cisneros says the Alisal coaches and students are now looking to the future and plan to use some of the extra money raised for the trip to cover the cost of SAT tests and college applications for the team’s seniors. Watch this video to learn more about the amazing work Coach Cisneros is doing with his team.
Congratulations, Coach Cisneros!
Taylor Farms, the Transformational Coaches of Monterey County, and the Central Coast Section of California Interscholastic Federation come together each high school athletic season, (Fall, Winter & Spring) to present the KSBW Golden Whistle Award. The award is given to a local Central Coast high school coach who is recognized by the community as an exceptional coach and mentor who strives to positively transform young athlete’s lives. This is the Taylor Farms’ 6th year sponsoring the KSBW Golden Whistle Award.
This week, Salinas was host to nearly 600 of the smartest and most entrepreneurial minds in Silicon Valley and global agriculture for the second annual Forbes Media AgTech Summit. Many industry leaders, including Taylor Farms Chairman and CEO Bruce Taylor, were part of the event, which also featured a speech by California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Under a huge white tent along Main Street Salinas, the invitation-only event fostered lively debate and generated rich networking opportunities while showcasing the latest innovation for farmers, investors and stakeholders of the global agricultural ecosystem.
“This summit is a fantastic opportunity for the AgTech community to discuss real solutions in accelerating new technologies and capabilities in farming,” said Taylor. “We are currently in trials with eight of the participating companies we met during last year’s Forbes AgTech Summit.” He also noted the spike in attendees this year — up from 400 — and observed that there are more growers open to “changes and innovation.”
Salinas Mayor Joe Gunter told The Californian, “It’s grown, it’s bigger and it’s exciting.” He said the event also brought in more customers to local downtown businesses and is part of the city’s goal to develop the agtech industry as part of a larger picture involving economic development and creating knowledge-based jobs.
In a media interview, Newsom said agriculture is already a $9 billion economic engine in Salinas Valley. He said leadership is critical to Salinas Valley’s goal of successfully merging ag and tech.
“It’s whatever you decide because all of the tools are here, everything is here,” Newsom said, adding that Salinas’ competitive edge includes the geography and being near the coast, and “proximity to the valley and the human capital. The opportunity is endless.”
The Innovation Showcase at the summit expanded this year, featuring more than 35 innovative AgTech startups focused on a wide variety of solutions that will result in higher crop yields and less food waste — from precision agriculture and robotics to traceability software, genomics and machine learning.
Forbes’ Paul Noglows, executive producer of the event, said part of the goal with this year’s show was to build the Innovation Showcase. “I’m really excited about how this program came together,” he added.
July 13th included a tour of the Taylor Farms processing plant.The next day’s plenary sessions fostered foster dynamic discussions around a range of topics including: food security, the microbe revolution, labor’s next frontier, and life after water.
One of the “Innovation Spotlights” involved a candid conversation between Dan Harburg of start-up Soft Robotics and Taylor, one of his beta customers. Harburg said that if there is a need for a robot with good dexterity and visual capability, “we might just have it.”
Soft Robotics is working with Taylor Farms by providing automated gripping technology to help with the sorting and packing of delicate fruits and vegetables. They told a media reporter that they have developed “a fundamentally new class of robotic grippers that are adaptive, inexpensive and simple to use.”
In an interview with Forbes, Harburg said the two companies will be rolling out several applications for the robotic arms at Taylor Farms’ plant in Salinas, CA, with full production about four to five years away. When that happens, Taylor noted, jobs in the industry can change from low-wage, low-skill work to more highly-skilled, better paying jobs.
