Spotlight
How to Become the Silicon Valley of Agriculture
“The glue holding us together is trust. If we focus on what we do best and find opportunities to engage every day, we’ll have the trust and collaboration we need to get it done.”
Danny Bernstein | CEO, The Reservoir
By Luciana Chavez Special to Merced College
Merced is ready for its closeup.
Maybe “ready” is too passive a word. Serious people in this area have jumped at the chance to forge the global technological future for agriculture.
Indeed, they want to turn this area into the Silicon Valley of Ag.
No goal this ambitious succeeds without excellent collaboration. So Merced College, UC Merced, the Community Foundation of Merced County (CFMC) and a startup incubator known as The Reservoir have joined forces to create the Merced AgTech Alliance.
The Alliance is backed by the largest state grant ever given for agtech—$9.2 million from the California Governor’s Office of Business & Economic Development (GoBIZ) for the California Jobs First Investment Initiative—to develop ag technology and to upskill the local workforce to handle that technology.
Each Alliance partner plays a role. Merced College will provide the hub.
“Our students can find internships and get in the door with startups who come here,” said Cody Jacobsen, Merced College’s Dean of Agriculture and Industrial Technology. “We can develop Merced College programs around that. Whether our students want to earn a BA at UC Merced or not, we then stand a better chance of keeping our talent within our community.”
UC Merced will drive research and development.
“The Alliance is a grand experiment, leveraging resources, talent and institutional infrastructure to develop solutions to pressing problems,” said Joshua Viers, UC Merced Associate Professor and Director of the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS).
The Reservoir will run a first-of-its-kind startup incubator on the Merced College campus.
“Merced College, the CFMC, UC Merced, and us—one of these things is not like the other,” said Danny Bernstein, CEO and Managing Partner at The Reservoir. “We might be strange bedfellows, but Merced College President Chris Vitelli saw past that. He knew bringing us into the group was the right thing to do for students and the community.”
The CFMC will act as the convener.
“We will inform how these projects evolve over time,” CFMC Executive Director Stephanie Dietz said. “We will attract private dollars to invest in the project. We’ll make sure the partners are meeting our community’s needs.
“There will be no displacement of farm workers. We’ll make sure the incubator targets our workers and employs real people. We’re going to make sure this happens.”
A collaborative spirit already exists, since the Alliance was stitched together with longstanding relationships and new ones.
For example, neighbors Merced College and UC Merced are current partners in the Merced Promise, a streamlined transfer pathway for students from the college to the UC. They’re teaming up to bring a 488-bed, affordable student housing projects to the UC Merced campus for both community college and graduate students.
On the other side, after success at Google and Microsoft, Bernstein was searching for the right, next big thing and knew he would focus on technology. A mutual friend introduced Bernstein to Vitelli in the spring of 2024.
“When we met, I knew President Vitelli was a special leader, but even before he got to know me, he said, ‘I know we will work together,’” Bernstein said.
The Alliance is also making use of work that’s already been done, specifically for the California Jobs First program, meant to make regional economies more equitable and sustainable. One thing CFMC saw during that process was how young and stable the workforce is in Merced County. That’s a demographic the Alliance needs to serve.
“The AgTech pathway became a really clear way to build something out of what we already have,” Dietz said. “We’re upscaling the workforce, not trying to remake our entire economy. We’re magnifying who we are instead. That’s much more attainable. I think it will have a generational impact.”
Viers rightly recognizes that the Alliance should lean on existing connections and thousands of personal ones.
For example, Dietz is a Merced College alumna and former City Manager of Merced. Viers is a product of a community college. Leigh Bernacchi, CITRIS Program Director at UC Merced, helped write the GoBIZ grant. Jacobsen, a former high school ag teacher, grew up in Le Grand. Vitelli holds an Agriculture Education degree from the University of Florida.
This team speaks the same language.
“Someone who is also key on our side is Danny Royer,” Viers added. “He went to Atwater High. He studied ag tech and worked at UC Davis. Then he came to work for us. Danny recognizes the value the Alliance will bring to this area if we succeed. If we do it right, it won’t be solely because of how the institutions and the community work together. It will also be because of what people like Danny bring to the table.”
Bernstein believes the collaborative spirit will get stronger.
“We have to be, we can be, and we will be clear on what our superpowers are,” Bernstein said. “The college is a community and a trusted institution, one that’s also a springboard to trade. UC Merced is a strong research institution. Now here we come from the Silicon Valley, and we want to bring tech startups and major corporations here to develop a workforce and a talent pipeline that those startups need.
“And the glue holding us together is trust. If we focus on what we do best and find opportunities to engage every day, we’ll have the trust and collaboration we need to get it done.”
The ambition at work here is huge. So is the growth potential.
“We get to expose our work to companies outside of our area. We gain more potential for bringing jobs here,” Jacobsen said. “What we’ve already seen has been really satisfying.”
To start, the college has a partnership with Toro, an international leader in ag irrigation. Toro will donate equipment to the Merced College farm. Bernstein also predicts that The Reservoir will attract 8-10 startups to the area by Fall 2026.
In 10 years, Merced could be the destination for the most brilliant minds in ag.
“They’ll all call Merced home,” Jacobsen said. “They’ll develop software and equipment here—and want to stay here. That’s how we’ll become an agtech talent hub, attracting innovators from around the world, while companies choose to stay here and hire our people.”
Viers said this work will also show the public what higher education can do for real people.
“It hasn’t always been abundantly clear to the public what they get back from their investment in higher education,” he said. “The Alliance is an example of exactly the things we should be doing in higher ed. Ultimately, we’re using our experience to give back to this community in very tangible ways.”
People of this region need to brace for impact. It’s coming.
“I think we’ve reached a moment in time that is in our favor,” Bernstein said. “The leadership of these institutions is very strong. The connectivity between the partners is strong. We’re not just feeding the world here. We’ve done that forever. Ag tech is the imperative. It needs to deliver. It must deliver.”
The Alliance needs momentum to fuel the collaboration. Dietz reaches back to the summer when she, Jacobsen and Bernacchi met to finish writing the GoBIZ grant.
“At the 11th hour, we had that energy and desire to get across the finish line,” Dietz said. “That energy will manifest 200-fold for this community. It’s the energy feeding this Alliance. It’s that energy that will transform Merced.”