Future food

CSU marries technology and agriculture at innovation summit

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The Front Range is poised to change how the world eats. That’s the message at the first ever “Advancing the Agriculture Economy Through Innovation” Summit at Colorado State University.

Over the course of three days, March 18-20, Colorado farmers, entrepreneurs, experts, industry members and more discussed cutting edge topics related to agriculture in a series of panels and lectures. The topics ranged from dealing with water shortages to financing agricultural entrepreneurs to passing a collective $1 trillion and entrenched agricultural knowledge from the current generation of farmers to a new one.

In short, the summit was designed to address topics that could promote major agricultural growth in Colorado and start to solve problems before they become unsolvable.

Kathay Rennels, associate vice president of engagement at CSU and coorganizer of the event, says the impetus for the summit came after she and a team surveyed Colorado for economic opportunities with Governor John Hickenlooper shortly after he first took office. They realized that the Front Range had a surplus of knowledge and potential for innovation that was not being tapped.

“What we found was along the Front Range, from Northern Colorado to approximately Colorado Springs, we have an innovation corridor; the only other one similar is around UC Davis,” Rennels says. “We have a significant amount of intellectual property along that Front Range innovation corridor, and looking at that we came up with 400 companies that really fit into the agriculture and [agriculture] innovation spaces.”

Those 400 companies that feed into the Front Range agricultural system range from craft breweries to specialty food makers like Justin’s Nut Butter to companies that make technology used by the agriculture industry. Rennels says when technology giant Hewlett-Packard closed its facility 15 years ago, many of those skilled workers opted to stay in Colorado, and worked to create startups. Many of those startups began to work with the agriculture industry, but have heretofore not been identified as part of the industry and not approached by the industry for innovation.

Rennels says the summit provides an opportunity to help technology companies and agricultural producers — and everyone in between — start making those connections and having those discussions. And the Front Range provides a unique area for the discussion to occur, she says.

“Colorado really has a unique opportunity, I think a challenging and unique opportunity in setting the tone with innovation in food and agricultural production and recognizing the connection to health, wellness and recognizing we have an amazing group of consumers along the Front Range that really like to speak into where their food comes from.”

So given the proximity between technology and agriculture on the Front Range, Rennels says by simply including as many companies related to the industry in the discussion as possible, Colorado can be a leader in changing how food is grown and consumed worldwide.

“You look to align the whole continuum [of businesses],” Rennels says. “There are companies [that] if you were to look at them from afar, you’d probably say they were water companies. 

“aWhere is one of the companies you’ll see partnered with CSU at the summit. aWhere collects weather data across the world to take to all sorts of countries so real life data can tell farmers in Africa and Asia exactly what to do at what time. That’s a data company but it works significantly in the [agricultural] space. So recognizing the connection between the two and that innovation and [agriculture] are Siamese twins, and they’ve worked together for a long time, bringing it back together as one conversation so we can curate that partnership and continue along the forward path, and really kind of cement Colorado in that space.”

John Corbett, CEO of aWhere, says his company is emerging and hiring interns and employees from Colorado universities and sending these skilled workers across the globe to both implement and improve their product.

“If you know things that are happening in the field in terms of the rain or weather or whatever, [you can determine] should they put fertilizer down, how fast it’s growing. The idea is to provide very specific information for farmers to be more optimal,” Corbett says.

Corbett says aWhere, which operates in Broomfield, has sent a group to Africa three times already in 2015, and works with data mined globally to provide a better technology for agricultural producers at home and abroad. He adds that there is a concerted effort underway in the industry and by the state for “Colorado to become the center of more international excellence relative to agriculture.”

Alongside CSU soil and atmospheric researchers, Corbett participated in a panel called “Climate Smart Agriculture,” addressing how climate change will specifically affect agriculture and how innovation in the field can mitigate damages.

Likewise, many of the panels at the summit were designed to address specific issues or fields that technological innovation could amend — the dairy industry, water scarcity, the fast food industry, food safety, fertilizers and more. But Rennels says the topic she thinks might have the most lasting impact, and for which many of the other topics discussed would be in vain without, concerned the issue of getting people with money to invest in agriculture and agriculture-based technology companies.

“I was visiting with a gentleman from California who runs a venture capital fund,” Rennels says. “One of the things he said is, ‘We don’t understand you in agriculture.’ And I said, ‘My generation thinks technology is risky.’ (Rennels is a third-generation agricultural producer herself ). And his comment back to me was, ‘I work in tech, and I think planting a seed and waiting for it to get rained on is riskier.’ And so those are two very different mindsets. But between my generation to him, the transfer of wealth is a challenge. Because in that transfer you want to keep the connection of agriculture and innovation together.”

Critical too is making sure the outgoing and incoming generation in the agriculture industry does not lose ageold knowledge, nor misses out on technological innovation.

“As my generation of agriculture embraces tech, the generation that understands it is the generation in back of me,” Rennels says. “We need to bring those together closer and closer and closer. If you’re doing that, then the next generation gets to bring in those really interesting topics that I think current generations might not reach into.”

Ultimately, the agricultural challenges ahead for Colorado, the country and the world will be solved only by cooperation from producers, entrepreneurs, government and consumers. Off to a good start, Colorado’s agriculture innovation leaders have Rennels feeling confident about the challenges her industry faces.

“I am probably more hopeful for my agricultural industry than I have been in 15 years, because I think we have an opportunity here in agriculture and innovation and in Colorado that I don’t see anywhere else,” she says.

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