Registration Now Open!

Great innovation starts with answering one question: what problem are you uniquely positioned to solve?

Velocity is an agbioscience accelerator focused in three critical areas: food is health, bioinnovation and farmer-focused innovation. Guided by research and strong mentorship, participants ranging from students, start-ups and existing companies will create solutions to defined challenges. Velocity culminates with a $25,000 prize for each track and an opportunity to move big ideas forward.

Let’s innovate.

Register by January 24 at 11:59 PM EST.

Empowering innovators to move big ideas forward.

In partnership with the Indiana Corn Marketing Council, Indiana Soybean Alliance, Elevance Health, Beck’s Hybrids and Ag Alumni Seed, Velocity tasks students, startups and existing companies with creating solutions to defined challenges in three critical areas: bioinnovation, farmer-focused innovation and food is health.

2024 Challenge Terms and Conditions

What problem will you uniquely solve?

Velocity Innovators can focus on one of three critical areas:

There is an unprecedented demand for bio-based products in the United States and globally with governments increasingly looking to alternative fuel options to enable transportation and energy sector transitions. Additionally, consumers are demanding more sustainable and bio-based products – from packaging to cosmetics. A winning solution will:

  • Develop technology focused on the use of novel microorganisms, biological transformations and biomolecules that unlock markets for bio-based products, sustainable bioinputs and biofuels and alternative energy;
  • Accelerate commercialization of modern biotechnology products that identify domestic supplies of important materials; or
  • Establish pilot-sale biological innovation that bring novel technology to the agbioscience ecosystem.

Farmers face compounding risks – from weather variability and shifting commodity markets to regulatory changes and consumers preferences – adding uncertainty to a challenging business. A winning solution will seek to create technologies that mitigate risk while also driving net farm income in areas that will:

  • Consolidate financial, agronomic and credit program data to enable seamless access and management in real-time;
  • Streamline government compliance processes for incentivfe and risk management programs;
  • Automate labor scheduling, tracking time and task assignment based on real time operational needs and worker availability;
  • Simplify the navigation of labor programs like H2-A, connecting producers with available labor resources more efficiently; or
  • Integrate robotics and automation to supplement human labor, addressing worker shortages while minimizing financial and logistical burdens on producers.

Fourteen percent of all households in the United States experience food insecurity, adults in those households are 15.3 percent more likely to have chronic illnesses and 19 percent of commercially insured patients over the age of 18 list access to healthy food as a health-related social need. A winning solution will seek to:

  • Accelerate innovation focused on increasing access to food;
  • Improve middle-mile logistics to gain efficiencies; or
  • Unlock the power of food at the production and/or molecular level to positively impact healthier human lives.
An accelerator program for innovators. Get started with us today!

Explore Challenge Resources:

Farmed-Focused Innovation

Centering farmers as advisors, co-creators and early adopters working collaboratively with agbioscience innovators on the development of new solutions.

Read the Report

Food is Health

Driving innovation at the intersection of plant, animal, human and environmental health, recognizing food as the nexus of these domains to create economic growth and improved health outcomes.

Read the Report

BioInnovation

Enabling bioinnovators and biomanufacturers to research, commercialize and scale biotechnology processes, platforms and products.

Read the Report

Timeline:

Pre-Launch Q&A

January 13 (Virtual)

Registration Deadline

January 24

Kick-off

January 27 (Virtual)

A springboard for agbioscience innovation:

Enabling startups to do well is in our DNA.

Every winner of the Producer-Led Innovation Challenge has either received follow on funding or has gone on to be acquired. Our HungerTech Challenge winners have been accepted into other accelerators or have received National Science Foundation grant funding to advance their work post-program.

Anu (2024)

Empowers people to grow produce from their own homes to improve nutrition and food security. They received over $369,000 in grant funding from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture and National Science Foundation.

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FiberX (2023)

Works with corn growers to source and convert corn stover into a feedstock for the chemical and materials sector. They completed a round of funding in 2024 that includes investment from Purdue Innovates.

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GreenBasket (2023)

Developed a click-and-collect model that delivers farmer’s market goods to areas of frequent community engagement instead of homes. They were accepted into the Fall 2023 gBeta AgBioScience Accelerator cohort.

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Aker Technologies (2022)

Provides software to improve the workflow of soil analysis, enabling producers access to soil zones and operational analysis that are custom to their farm. Aker Technologies was acquired by Indiana-based Intelinair in 2023.

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Regrow Ag (2021)

Measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) tool that uses vetted crop and soil models, connectivity to farm management platforms and satellite imagery to create an agronomic platform with a fair, trustworthy market for Carbon.

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iYOTAH Solutions (2020)

Ingests data from multiple sources, secures data in the cloud and provides analytics for better and more connected information. iYOTAH Solutions completed a $2.8 million round in 2024.

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A thank you to our sponsors: