More Adoption of CASP Needed
The Almond Board of California would like more adoption from growers regarding the California Almond Sustainability Program, also known as CASP.
CASP was widely discussed at the recent Almond Industry Conference in Sacramento.
Jeff Dlott is President and CEO of SureHarvest, a company that helps develop sustainability management information systems for the almond Board
A big goal is finding ways to encourage adoption. “If you do workshops, you get more people signed up. If you have more push and leadership in terms of the messaging like we would expect from the almond conference, we will see an increased rate of adoption in terms of people signing up and doing assessments. So we specifically look at what works, what doesn't, and where to target resources,” Dlott said.
Now, there are nine modules in the self-assessment program and we asked Dlott if it's considered complete only when all nine modules are completed. “Yes, ideally, and I think this is a core part of the messaging. The Almond Board has this messaging of Farm of the Future. Farm of the Future is digitized, it's wired, it is optimized,” noted Dlott
“The Farmer of the future is tapping into all of these different resources. So before we had people doing all the modules on paper, now we almost have no people do it on paper. Everyone goes online. So, this whole idea like our growers adopting technology? Do they have the capacity? They absolutely do,” Dlott said.
