Doing good by doing well – it’s a concept the AgriNovus Indiana team embraced when the HungerTech Innovation Challenge was launched. Three years later, it’s still going strong; and new solutions are hitting the market that better connect food supply with food demand. 

The 2024 HungerTech tasks innovators with developing market-driven tech models that ensure increased and equitable food distribution that is both environmentally sustainable and economically viable. The winning team will receive $25,000 to help accelerate commercialization of their solution. 

Solutions could find, but are not limited to, opportunities for innovation in the following areas: 

 

Registration to join this year’s HungerTech Innovation Challenge closes March 12. Learn more and connect with Geoff at agrinovusindiana.com/hungertech.

 

HungerTech Innovation Challenge to focus on developing tech models that increase equitable food distribution, environmental sustainability and economic viability

AgriNovus Indiana, an initiative to grow the state’s agbioscience economy, released new secondary research today identifying the need for market-driven technologies that ensure increased and equitable food distribution to eliminate hunger.

The study was conducted by Purdue University student, Tushar Sonvani, to inform the scope of the 2024 HungerTech Innovation Challenge that tasks innovators with creating and implementing tech-enabled business solutions that connect food supply with food demand. A winning solution will receive $25,000 to help accelerate commercialization of their solution.

“Combatting food insecurity requires a portfolio of solutions, and it’s clear that innovation presents tremendous opportunity to unlock new ability to better connect food supply with food demand,” said Mitch Frazier, president and CEO of AgriNovus Indiana.

Entitled Addressing Food Insecurity and Waste in the United States Through a Market-Driven Model, the research shows a significant paradox in the United States where nearly 12 percent of households face food insecurity while up to 40 percent of our nation’s food supply is discarded annually. This stark contrast is exacerbated by logistical inefficiencies, inaccurate demand planning and unequal access to information about the availability of food and nutrition.

The study unveils a key set of challenges that need to be solved to eliminate food insecurity, including:

  1. Logistical gaps in the food supply chain: current critical inefficiencies exist in capturing, managing and redirecting surplus food from points of excess – such as producers and retailers – to communities grappling with food insecurity (this is exacerbated for perishable goods).
  2. Inadequate demand planning and forecasting:  deployment of tools for accurately forecasting the production of surplus food and quantifying demand from food-insecure populations have significant deficiencies.
  3. Preservation: there are shortfalls in current food preservation technologies to prolong shelf life of perishables without detracting nutritional value or safety.

“The challenges that face food insecurity are numerous, systemic and widespread,” said Tushar Sonvani, Purdue University student and author of the study. “Participating in the HungerTech Research Sprint creates a new way for entrepreneurial minds to tackle these challenges head on with more than one solution to better connect food supply with food demand.”

Registration for the HungerTech Innovation Challenge closes on March 12. To learn more and register a team for this year’s Challenge, click here.

The full study, Addressing Food Insecurity and Waste in the United States Through a Market-Driven Model is available at www.AgriNovusIndiana.com.

Key Takeaways:

 

Intelinair, the makers of AGMRI and a leading ag data analytics company, announced the latest addition to its suite of data analytics for the 2024 crop season – AGMRI Analyze. AGMRI Insights, the in-season analytics suite, will continue to be available to inform real-time data-driven decision-making.

AGMRI Analyze monitors nine common yield-limited factors, enabling farmers to pinpoint and understand potential issues that have impacted their yield during the season. This data-driven approach helps farmers make informed decisions for the upcoming crop season, ultimately contributing to improved efficiency and yield potential.

“With the addition of Analyze, we have created a more complete data analytics package that farmers can rely on for both in-season monitoring and postseason analytics,” said Tim Hassinger,  Intelinair president and CEO. “Our team identified nine common rate-limiting factors based on feedback from AGMRI users, and we’ve integrated them into this new capability for the 2024 season. By consolidating in-season and postseason analytics into a unified platform, we’re taking real-time and postseason data-driven decision-making to the next level.”

 

Highlights of AGMRI Insights and AGMRI Analyze:

 

Covers in-season agronomic insights:

 

Covers postseason data analytics:

 


Use Case: Using AGMRI Analyze to Measure Emergence Impact on Yield

Measured emergence helps farmers determine the emergence percentage and how well hybrids or varieties performed. With this information, a farmer can explore which hybrids or varieties had a combination of good emergence and yield and answer key questions for planning for the next crop season.

 

Potential Impact on Yield

AGMRI Analyze measures every plant throughout the field for emergence and can correlate actual emergence back to many factors to help understand which ones impacted emergence and the final field yield. 

Key Data Provided:

 

Questions for Next Year’s Crop Season Planning

 

“If a hybrid or variety had poor emergence but still produced a good yield per 1,000 plants, a farmer can explore varied factors such as soil conditions, soil types, weather, planter speed, and other factors that might have limited the emergence potential of those specific hybrids and varieties,” said Conner Schmidt, Intelinair national sales leader. “If good emergence relative to planted rate exists and a poor yield occurs, then a  grower may want to reconsider the placement of those hybrids and varieties or possibly eliminate them altogether from their product selection.”

Schmidt added, “Other factors to investigate are nutrient deficiencies, disease, or crop stress on how they impacted the final yield.”

For more information about Intelinair, AGMRI Insights and AGMRI Analyze, or how to sign up for the 2024 season, visit https://www.intelinair.com/agmri.

 

About Intelinair
Intelinair provides whole field insights all season long to farmers and ag retailers through its easy-to-use interactive platform, AGMRI. Through AGMRI Insights and AGMRI Analyze, Intelinair’s proven data analytics capabilities tracks every acre, every factor – emergence & population impacts, nutrient utilization, hybrid and variety performance, and even weather impact – for data-driven in season and postseason decision making and identifies sustainability opportunities. Learn more at Intelinair.com or visit our social media channels.

Breakthrough software and services reduce grower resource usage and costs while increasing volume and quality

Boyd Street Ventures announced that it has become the lead investor in VinSense, LLC, whose innovative decision support software system and services enable agricultural crop producers to optimize their use of water, fertilizers and other resources while increasing their crop yields, quality and prices.

VinSense’s mission is to address the serious challenges faced by crop growers due to climate change and rising costs of water, labor, fertilizers and other resources. The company has developed a proprietary and highly effective approach to precision soil management to meet growers’ needs.

“VinSense technology transforms soil data, microdata, historical data and precision soil maps into intuitive, easy-to-use visual information to increase the effectiveness of the decisions growers make throughout the season,” said Dr. David Ebert, developer of the technology and VinSense Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer. “This allows growers to optimize water and resource management to achieve the best possible combination of quantity, quality, uniformity and cost from their crops.”

VinSense’s customers include numerous California and Washington wineries, including Robert Biale Vineyards, Cakebread Cellars, Francis Ford Coppola Winery, Ridge Vineyards, and Silver Oak. The company will be moving its headquarters from Northern California to Norman, Oklahoma, where Dr. Ebert is Gallogly Chair Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Director of the Data Institute for Societal Challenges.

“We’re very excited to become the lead investor in a Smart Agriculture innovator that brilliantly and economically addresses many of the most serious threats climate change and rising costs are creating for growers of wine grapes and other important crops,” said James Spann, Boyd Street Ventures Founder and General Partner. “We’re also very proud that VinSense is relocating to our home city of Norman, and we look forward to helping the company grow its revenues and create new job opportunities for Oklahomans.”

ABOUT BOYD STREET VENTURES

Boyd Street Ventures is a groundbreaking, early-stage venture capital firm connecting institutional and other investors to high-growth investment opportunities founded and developed by entrepreneurs from Oklahoma and elsewhere. BSV places Pre-Seed, Seed, Series A and follow-on investments in the Life Sciences, FinTech, Energy Tech, Aerospace & Defense, and Climate Tech sectors. The firm focuses on under-the-radar startups that are less likely to have their prices overbid and overpriced than startups targeted by larger VC firms on the East and West Coasts. This focus, coupled with its unusually active involvement in providing de-risking strategic and operational counsel to its portfolio companies through its Boyd Street Venture Studio, enables BSV to target above-average returns for its investors. For more information, please visit https://www.boydstreetventures.com/

Name: Julia Hamblen
University: Purdue University
Major/Minor: Agricultural Education with a Wood Products Manufacturing Technology Minor
Semesters as a Field Atlas Ambassador: 5 Semesters

What do you enjoy most about the role?
I enjoy having the creative freedom to discover new ways to educate others on AgBioScience. I love everything about education, and this role allows me to conduct this in new and innovative ways all the time.

What has surprised you most about the agbiosciences?
It never ceases to amaze me how AgBioScience is an industry that truly affects every single person on this planet no matter where we are. I think it is so cool to be able to advocate and educate on an industry that touches all of us and to watch those “ah-ha” moments when I am talking to someone else about AgBioScience when they realize how cool the industry is as well.

Which agbioscience company interests you most, and why?
I may be a little biased, but I will have to say Indiana Soybean Alliance. I had the chance to intern with them in the summer of 2022, and it was one of the best experiences I have ever had. I had the chance to work in the Glass Barn and see all of the behind-the-scenes of renovating it that summer, and it was such a fun process to see progress and watch all of the kids learn about soybeans. Seeing their efforts surrounding education was exciting to be a part of.

How can students get in touch with you?
I can be reached at my AgriNovus email, [email protected].

Today’s guest is an entrepreneur who got her skills in organizing business systems where any young talent might consider learning efficiency: the Chick-fil-a drive-thru. Sarah Hinkley, CEO of Barn Owl Precision Ag, actually helped to build the fast-food chain’s drive-thru system as we know it today (alongside her brother). Watching a major company leverage technology to solve problems really inspired Sarah and from that, a company was born.

Sarah gets into Barn Owl’s inception, creating new innovation to supplement a massive labor problem and listening to what growers need today, tomorrow and what would be nice in the future. She dives into how a Barn Owl robot functions and what factors are driving the need for more agility on-farm. As a serial minded entrepreneur, Sarah also provides insight into launching an idea into a business, creating solutions to problems and making a difference through your work (even when it hurts).

Ryan Priest is no stranger to hard work and servant leadership, assets that have been integral to his role as COO at Premier Ag Cooperative today. And as someone that has done many jobs – from welding to executive leadership – he identified a problem that needed a new, fresh idea to solve: developing an emerging workforce that’s equipped with the tools to understand farmers, the broader agbioscience economy and the technical knowledge required to be successful in the industry.

Ag equipment today has more in common with an airplane than a pickup truck and there is an under-appreciated level of knowledge required to operate this machinery. Ryan talks about Premier’s cutting-edge work-based training program with Ivy Tech designed for workers to better understand and function in high-tech agriculture. He notes the ripple effect of talent starting in the program and learning more about the industry, and the earning potential for someone in the program.

Mitch Frazier recently joined Ryan’s podcast, The High Ground, which can be heard here: https://www.premierag.com/2024/01/ep-119-agrinovus-consumer-electronics-show-ces-favorite-purchase/

Field Atlas Ambassadors are the on-campus connection to our Field Atlas career exploration platform. These students work with their peers to connect to agbioscience fields of study, career paths, companies hiring talent and where to apply for real-time internship + job opportunities.

Meet our spring ambassadors:

 

Get to know your campus ambassador in our intro video here:

BiomEdit, an emerging animal health biotechnology company, announced today that it has received a $4.5M grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to accelerate research and development of a portfolio of novel microbiome-based solutions to reduce methane emissions that also enhance feed efficiency for beef and dairy cattle. This innovation has the potential to significantly impact agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and enhance the livelihood of small-scale producers and pastoralists in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where cattle are a vital source of income.

FISHERS, Ind., Nov. 1, 2023 –– BiomEdit, an emerging animal health biotechnology company, announced today that it has received a $4.5M grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to accelerate research and development of a portfolio of novel microbiome-based solutions to reduce methane emissions that also enhance feed efficiency for beef and dairy cattle. This innovation has the potential to significantly impact agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and enhance the livelihood of small-scale producers and pastoralists in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where cattle are a vital source of income.

As the number one agricultural source of greenhouse gases worldwide, ruminants like cattle produce methane as part of their normal digestive process. Methane is a major contributor to climate change and each year a single cow alone will belch about 220 pounds of methane. According to the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), livestock contribute up to 80 percent of developing countries’ agricultural GDP and they serve as an important source of nutrition and livelihood for small-scale producers and pastoral communities. Finding a way to reduce methane emissions in native cattle in their local habitat while increasing productivity is key to environmental and economic sustainability, particularly for Africa and South Asia.

“To meaningfully impact climate change, there must be a simultaneous benefit of reducing methane emission in cattle plus redirecting spare energy, which would otherwise go to creating methane, to increasing feed efficiency for nutritious meat and milk,” said Aaron Schacht, CEO of BiomEdit.

BiomEdit’s solutions will target the rumen microbiome, which is the community of microorganisms that live in a cow’s digestive tract. The rumen microbiome plays a key role in digestion, with specific microorganisms responsible for methane production. The company will take a multi-pronged approach to leverage natural and synthetic probiotics and bioactives that robustly reduce methane emissions and increase cattle performance by inhibiting energy losses through methanogenesis and enhancing production of volatile fatty acids (VFA, the main source of energy from the rumen). Pathways to administer the innovations could take the form of feed additives, feed supplements, veterinary biologics, or pharmaceuticals.

“To make a meaningful impact on climate change, there must be a simultaneous benefit of reducing methane emission in cattle plus redirecting the spare energy, which would otherwise go to creating methane, to increasing feed efficiency so everyone can benefit from nutritious meat and milk – no matter where they are in the world. The answer is found through the microbiome and synthetic biology,” said Aaron Schacht, CEO of BiomEdit. “We are grateful for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s belief in our Methane Reduction R&D program, and excited to partner with them to enable both large- and small-scale producers to benefit from the innovations.”

A range of current strategies for methane reduction are in development or on the market, however, direct inhibition of methanogens has shown the largest effect on mitigating enteric methane emissions. An issue with many products currently available is farmers must fund an additional input to gain methane emission reduction and feed efficiency, so they do not often see a sufficient return on investment. Developing methane mitigation products that can improve production efficiency and pay for themselves will make this approach financially feasible for farmers, encouraging them to participate.

 

BiomEdit’s Development Platform and People

BiomEdit’s research is based on their unique platform combining well-curated microbial reference libraries, microbiome analytics, synthetic biology, and artificial intelligence (AI) to develop novel biologic products targeting significant challenges facing animals, humans, and our shared habitat.

As pioneers in the application of AI and machine learning in animal health, patterns and relationships are identified in the data to generate novel insights into how an animal’s microbiome shifts as it transitions from health to disease and back again – leading to a deeper level of knowledge about how the microbiome functions as an ecosystem.

The BiomEdit team is a diverse group of innovators with an entrepreneurial spirit: scientists with deep expertise in microbiome science and product development. The Methane Reduction R&D program team alone holds over 50 patent applications and more than 200 peer-reviewed scientific publications. The company also plans to collaborate with leading experts in rumen microbiome analysis at key academic research institutions on this project.

Keeping livestock producers’ livelihoods in mind, BiomEdit announced in October a first-of-its-kind collaboration with Athian, the world’s first cloud-based carbon marketplace for the livestock industry, to develop sustainability protocols and products in parallel. The company helps livestock producers capture and claim carbon credits earned through sustainability efforts by aggregating, validating, and certifying greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions, and monetizing those reductions for the producer through the sale of carbon insetting credits.

 

About BiomEdit

BiomEdit is an emerging animal health biotechnology company that leverages a unique platform combining the leading science of the microbiome with synthetic biology to innovate novel animal health products to address challenges in livestock production and pet health. Founded through a strategic partnership in 2022 between Elanco Animal Health (NYSE: ELAN) and Ginkgo Bioworks (NYSE: DNA), the company was born from a carve-out of technology and assets from Elanco combined with access to Ginkgo’s leading cell programming platform technology. BiomEdit is a private venture funded by Anterra Capital, Viking Global Investors, Ferment, and Nutreco Ventures. In 2022, BiomEdit was recognized by S&P Global Animal Health as Best Start-up in Animal Health in its annual animal health industry awards. www.biomedit.com

Forbes – the global business media powerhouse – named Indiana the best place to start a business in 2023. It’s one of many recent wins on the board for Indiana – a trophy case that includes everything from securing commitments for $33B in capital investment in the last six quarters to securing the rights to host the next Global Entrepreneurship Congress. It’s momentum that today’s guest seeks to continue. Indiana Secretary of Commerce David Rosenberg joins us to look into the future, poising Indiana for success and retaining young talent in state for generations to come. 

David talks about getting the economy you want versus the one that comes to you, the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC) becoming a strategic organization and agbioscience’s role in building our state’s future.  He also gets into Indiana’s evolving talent pipeline and creating the necessary tools for companies to fill jobs. David also talks about growing the state’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, venture’s growth and opportunities in Indiana and shaking the humble Hoosier mindset.  

With all this momentum and a little bit of time left under Governor Holcomb’s administration, what’s next for IEDC? David looks ahead at what needs to be done, the strength of their team to make it happen and his excitement for Indiana’s future.

Listen here.

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