Boone County ag goes after venture capital

Maria Flora, The Lebanon Reporter, Ind.
·4 min read

Mar. 14—Agricultural bioscience accounts for annual earnings of $52 billion in Indiana. Numerous ag bioscience companies call Boone County home, and opportunities are growing in the field.

"When we talk about ag bioscience, we're talking about five key areas here in Indiana" AgriNovus Indiana President Mitch Frazier said. They are:

* Value added food nutrition;

* Animal health and nutrition;

* Plant science and crop protection;

* Agricultural equipment and technology systems; and

* Production agriculture.

"We have phenomenal family farms here in Boone County and across Indiana," Boone County Economic Development Talent Development Manager Sarah Ford said. "But we also have a lot of ag bioscience companies as well — more than a dozen of them."

Ford and Frazier were speaking to a group of agricultural professionals, educators, scientists, and food producers during a Boone EDC breakfast discussion last week at Dull's Tree Farm in Mechanicsburg on attracting venture capital for ag bioscience in Boone County.

"The ag bioscience economy is the only economy in the world that touches every person on this planet," Frazier said. AgriNovus Indiana is a non-profit organization focused on accelerating the economy by developing, building, attracting, retaining and aiding ag bioscience companies, according to its website. The organization also connects entrepreneurs with industries and capital and aims to add $4 billion to the state's ag bioscience economy by 2024.

Frazier laid out three key trends that lie ahead in the ag bioscience economy.

Biofuels

Biofuels will re-emerge and help the country during its energy transition, providing an alternative to diesel fuel. That represents a significant opportunity for crop producers, sustainable fuel makers and others, he said.

Farm tractors cannot yet run on battery power. For one John Deer model in particular, it would take "39 Tesla Model 3 batteries," Frazier said. "The tractor would weigh twice as much, would be twice as big and cost four times as much ... If they did electrify that tractor, the carbon intensity would be the same as if the tractor were running on sustainable biofuels."

Manufacturers are innovating by buying and working with tech companies to achieve electric automated tractors. But the technology is "just not there yet," Frazier said.

Labor shortage

Labor challenges will continue to create opportunities for innovation, Frazier said. One company developed a robot that can pick lettuce because it could not hire enough people to do so.

Another company used artificial intelligence to develop a system that raises shrimp in a large box. The system feeds the shrimp, controls their environment and more. "And they can do it in a way that is nearly autonomous," Frazier said.

Ag tech consolidation

Ag companies are expected to continue to partner with and buy tech companies to create new agricultural solutions. One tractor maker, for instance, bought an Austrian battery maker and powered a line of excavators with them.

"I think if we look holistically across Indiana and the Midwest, these adjacent technologies create really interesting opportunities for us to think about," Frazier said.

Local innovation

Those creating new technologies need companies and farmers to try them and give feedback, from robots to seeds, and everything in between. Frazier recommended that farmers who want to participate partner with those developing in new innovations.

Thorntown farmer Allen Mohler is no stranger to that process. His son, Kyle Mohler, founded Insignum AgTech and has already attracted venture capitalists. Kyle Mohler found a way to modify the genes in seeds to make them turn purple when they become diseased. Kyle plants test plots of his corn on his father's farm.

For example, the plants turn purple when fungus is present, but before it is visible.

"Once you see the fungus, you've already suffered the loss," Allen said.

Fungicide can't bring the plants back after the fungus is visible.

When the farmer sees the purple plants, he or she can just apply fungicide to affected parts of the crop. The modified seeds eliminate the expense of preventive fungicide on all crops a farmer plants and make it possible to treat only what is necessary, Allen said.

Kyle Mohler recently received capital investment to move toward a commercially ready product and seek approval from the United States Department of Agriculture.