University of California, Merced
09/10/2026 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 09/10/2026 12:20
Technology Revolution in Agriculture Needs Investment in Humans as Well as Machines
Respondents with children were less than half as likely to respond that they were interested in agtech training than their childless counterparts. Respondents who said childcare would affect their ability to return to school had 5.97 times higher odds of expressing interest in further education, making childcare the strongest predictor identified in the analysis.
Childcare may be as important to workforce development as broadband or transportation, the study found. And the costs of training, not a lack of interest, limitsparticipation.
"The future of agriculture is not simply about putting more technology in the field," said co-author Joshua Viers, associate vice chancellor of interdisciplinary research andstrategic initiatives and a civil and environmental engineering professor at UC Merced. "It is about investing in the people who understand those fields."
Respondents indicated they would need training outside of typical work hours, highlighting the need for programs to be flexible.
Tarmworker communities can drive agricultural technology adoption when structural barriers to training are addressed, the researchers wrote. That supports UC Merced's longstanding efforts in agricultural innovation that focus on workforce development, the environment and the regional economy.
"The results offer a roadmap for inclusive digitalization that treats workforce development infrastructure as integral to agricultural systems design," they wrote.
Some of that work is underway, with the development of the Farms Food Future Ag Systems certificate program. Seven regional community colleges in the Central Valley began offering the program in 2024. It includes training in digital literacy, equipment operation and crop production systems, as well as interpersonal skills and technical writing.
"This survey confirms a reality agriculture has too often overlooked: Farmworkers are its longest-standing practitioners and best-positioned transition partners," said Karen Aceves, founder and CEO of Arken Strategies and a co-author of the paper. That insight helped shape AgTEC, a competency-based program now serving more than 1,000 students across the Central Valley.
"By recognizing the expertise farmworkers already hold and adding the technical skills, tools and agency to advance, we are preparing them to lead agriculture'stransformation as full partners in its future," Aceves said.
Leigh Bernacchi, director of ag innovation at Merced College, formerly served as executive director of VISTA F3 at UC Merced and also is a co-author of the study.
"F3 brought together community colleges and UC Merced to tackle one of the biggest problems in agriculture: labor. The question is really about the retention of agricultural experts and how we can use technology intentionally," she said. That partnership has continued through California Jobs First funding for the Merced AgTechAlliance to create workforce development programs that serve diverse students in agtech. "We learned from this research that agtech adoption can be accelerated by investing in the people to run the robots, drones and sensors, especially if they already understand the complexities of agriculture."
Investments such as these in farmworker education should be seen not as charitable interventions but as strategic investments in retaining the agronomic expertise that agricultural technology systems require to function effectively, the researchers said.
"If we want agricultural innovation to succeed at scale, workforce development has to be treated as part of the technology infrastructure itself," Viers said. "That means building training around the realities of working families in our Valley communities."
University of California, Merced published this content on September 10, 2026, and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed via Public Technologies (PUBT), unedited and unaltered, on September 10, 2026 at 18:20 UTC. If you believe the information included in the content is inaccurate or outdated and requires editing or removal, please contact us at [email protected]