Team Spotlight: Cody Bishop

• RAPID FIRE QUESTIONS:

• Grew Up In: Arizona – Gilbert, in the Phoenix area
• Currently Lives In: Yakima, WA
• Star Sign: Aquarius
• What is your favorite thing to eat?: My wife makes a Mediterranean lamb dish that is amazing! Anything Mediterranean. I just love food, I’ll eat anything – I love it all.
• What is the first CD you ever owned?: I think my first one was N’Sync’s 1997 self-titled, but I also had a ton of Elvis Presley and Jerry Lewis.
• What is your favorite recent purchase?: I bought a 15 foot trampoline for our backyard that we love jumping on after dinner. Also, this is a total dad answer – I bought fake grass for our front and back yard. It’s been a total game changer. I love it. It’s easy maintenance and my water use is cut in half. The kids want to play outside even more.

• How did you get your start in the agriculture industry?
• While I was in tech in San Jose, I started realizing that ever since I was a kid I wanted to be in agriculture.
• I started emailing farmers at random – I was trying to spend the day at their farm and work for free, but no one was getting back to me.
• I was at a golf tournament and I sat next to Bob Price at the event – we started talking and I found out he’s a Washington apple farmer – but I assumed it was a small hobby farm. 
• He invited me out to see the farm and when I went out what I thought was a hobby farm was 2500+ acres. A month later they asked If I wanted a job to help them evaluate tech and they’d teach me farming. 

What do you most enjoy about working in agriculture?

• To sum it up – it’s that no day is the same. I love that. It’s great to have all these varying seasons – workload-wise. One day I am talking with agtech companies and other days I am walking blocks to decide when to pick. It breaks up the monotony of the typical 8-5.

What is the most interesting project you’ve worked on while at PickTrace? 

• Pulse. What I loved about that project was thinking through not just “what is cool/nice to have ”, but the applicability of it. We were able to bring a solution that allowed users to make operational changes with their data.
• One of my other favorites was working with our engineering team as they were making the initial plans for the insights app. I enjoyed working with them and hearing their questions as they were asking me about the information they needed to show.
• When I first got hired, we had a client who needed to do a lot of process improvements to get stable. I enjoyed getting to work with them on improving their own processes, not just those related to PickTrace.

What are your hobbies and passions outside of work? 

• If I’ve got time, golf is #1
• I really like home improvement projects, landscaping, and gardening. Right now I’m finishing up some landscaping irrigation, planting ornamentals, and laying out the next garden project by the chicken coop.

Do you have any guiding principles or quotes that you live by?

• God, family, friends, work – that’s my hierarchy and how I prioritize things. 
• I am a big believer in asking “Why?”, not just for learning, but keeping myself in check with goals and ambitions ensuring that my time is spent on worthwhile things. A lot easier said than done.

If you were a fruit or vegetable what would you be and why?

• Pineapple because they tell it as it is. It is the oxymoron of fruit. Pineapples are bright, sour, and sweet all at the same time. They show the negatives (spikes, rough outside), but also show positive potential (color change, smell). They are surprising, contradicting themselves (some taste amazing while others are mediocre), yet somehow consistent.