INDIANAPOLIS — AgriNovus Indiana, a non-profit focused on growing Indiana’s agbioscience economy, announced today that FiberX of Hammond, Ind. has won the Producer-Led Innovation Challenge, awarding them $25,000 to advance commercialization of their solution. In partnership with the Indiana Corn Marketing Council and Indiana Soybean Alliance, the Producer-Led Innovation Challenge tasked companies, entrepreneurs, students and innovators with creating new revenue streams from current on-farm processes to increase efficiency and return on investment for producers’ operations. “Agriculture is the only economy in the world that touches every person on the planet, because it centers on food,” said Mitch Frazier, president and CEO of AgriNovus. “This challenge sought to identify new innovations that enable farmers to generate additional revenue streams while simultaneously meeting the growing global demand for a sustainable food system.” FiberX works with corn growers to source and convert corn [...]

INDIANAPOLIS (Dec. 14, 2022) — AgriNovus Indiana, a non-profit coalition focused on growing the agbioscience economy, announced that Aker Technologies from Effingham, Ill. has won the AgriNovus Producer-Led Innovation Challenge, earning the agtech company $25,000 to accelerate development of its software. Presented and defined by the Indiana Corn Marketing Council and Indiana Soybean Alliance, the Producer-Led Innovation Challenge asked innovators to create a tech solution to improve on-farm data accuracy that could lead to reducing the cost of operating capital and improving net farm income. “Working with producers and many across the industry, it’s clear that conquering the complexity of on-farm data while providing a potential path to lower cost of operating capital is an unmet challenge in today’s agtech economy,” said Mitch Frazier, president and CEO of AgriNovus Indiana. “Aker’s unique approach to tackling this challenge provides an interesting [...]

INDIANAPOLIS (Sept. 22, 2021) — AgriNovus Indiana, an initiative focused on growing Indiana’s agbioscience economy, today announced Regrow from Durhman, N.H. as the winning team of its Producer-Led Innovation Challenge, awarding them $25,000 provided by Purdue Foundry as well as professional services from The PLAID Agency and Sikich LLP. The Producer-Led Innovation Challenge, presented by the Indiana Corn Marketing Council and Indiana Soybean Alliance, was designed to inspire innovators to create software that makes it faster for farmers to aggregate complex data sets required to participate in Carbon markets, where companies purchase credits from farming operations that sequester Carbon. From tech startups to student teams, participants worked to create a solution that accomplished the following objectives: Ability to integrate years of multiple data sources from across farm operations to create a market-ready data set with minimal farmer manual data entry, [...]

INDIANAPOLIS (June 23, 2021) — AgriNovus Indiana, the initiative to advance Indiana’s agbioscience economy, launched a $25,000 innovation challenge today for the tech community to solve a critical data gap that prevents farmers from participating in Carbon markets, where companies purchase credits from farming operations that sequester Carbon. Presented by the Indiana Corn Marketing Council and Indiana Soybean Alliance, the 2021 Producer-Led Innovation Challenge seeks to inspire innovators to create software to make it faster for farmers to aggregate the complex multi-year, multi-source data sets required to participate in Carbon markets. “Carbon markets are emerging as an opportunity to increase net farm income by paying Producers for stewardship of the land,” said Mitch Frazier, president and CEO of AgriNovus Indiana. “The Producer-Led Innovation Challenge empowers innovators with a Producer view of the current Carbon market challenge and provides a $25,000 grand [...]