Several dozen area agriculture industry professionals and employers met at the Peoria USDA Ag Lab last week for two hours of what AgTech Connect organizer Leigh Ann Brown referred to as “purposeful collisions” designed to spark economic growth in the Greater Peoria region.
According to Brown, who is the CEO for the Morton Economic Development Council, the agriculture industry is a major socio-economic driver in central Illinois accounting for thousands of local jobs and billions in economic stimulus. Connecting current and future employers with a capable local workforce is the goal of AgTech Connect, which has held a few local meetings since organizing a little over a year ago.
“(The ag industry) is economic development, it is innovation, it has been the foundation of so much that has been developed throughout our region and beyond,” Brown told meeting attendees and speakers, which included Peoria Ag Lab Director Todd Ward along with various USDA researchers and business development specialists who are seeking local partnerships with ag tech businesses to bring new products and technologies to market.
“We’ve all experienced how hard it is to connect with others to further your development along with supply chain needs and opportunities. We need to bring this industry closer together and have purposeful collisions for creative solutions and innovations, and uncover opportunities to yield greater growth for all of us,” Brown told the employers present at the event, which included representatives from Peoria’s Distillery Labs, start-up ag software company GoodFarmSolutions of Morton and many other local ag-related businesses, start-ups and spin-offs.
Public-private partnerships sought by USDA-ARS
Brown said the AgTech Connect program is “moving throughout the region” to bridge the gap between qualified entry-level and experienced employees and farmers to high-end, tech-related companies, organizations and other resource partners. Those partners include the USDA Ag Lab, which is officially known as the United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service’s (ARS) National Center for Agricultural Utilization and Research (NCAUR).
Current research projects underway at NCAUR include work to improve climate resilience and sustainability of cereal crops, reduce insect and disease pressure on crops and create products intended to improve pollinator health. According to Ward, once ready for release into the market many of the products and technologies being developed at the Ag Lab will be available for commercial development through partnership agreements with the USDA.
“We’ve always been focused on bio-based solutions here, whether in terms of renewable agricultural materials or developing entirely new products, such as pennycress, and commercializing those crops or the products of those crops,” the NCAUR director stated. The “handing off” of government-produced product and technology research to public, for-profit companies– or the opposite– is achieved through processes known as technology transfers and cooperative research partnerships, according to USDA researcher and scientist Dr. Ken Doll, who also acts as NCAUR’s “tech transfer liaison” to private industry.
“To get technology into the world we have to have some kind of delivery system. Technology has to be transferred to have any real-world impact. It’s not a new thing; this goes back at least to Harry Truman,” said Doll, adding that because the Ag Lab uses public funding and resources for its research and development, it is appropriate that public industry should have the opportunity to bring USDA products and technologies to market.
“Cooperative research partnerships are between the ARS and private partners–maybe one of you,” Doll said, gesturing to the business representatives present at the session. “But the pieces all have to fit. A lot of times you guys have the technological marketing expertise we don’t have.
Source:wcbu.org
Photo Credit: GettyImages-artiemedvedev
Categories: Illinois, Business