BUDDING agriculture-based entrepreneurs with innovative ideas or dreams of forming a start-up company to develop them, can find out more about it at free workshops, the first in Western Australia, hosted by Farmers2Founders (F2F).
The Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) has partnered with F2F to run the GRDC Growers as Innovators workshop at Mingenew next Thursday, 10am-3pm, in the MIG building, 54 Midlands Road.
AgPro Management and F2F will also run the Innovation and Tech Engagement workshop at Tambellup on Monday, September 9, 12 noon-5pm at the Tambellup Pavilion, 34 Norrish Street.
According to F2F, the aim of the workshops is to encourage emerging producer innovators.
F2F is a four-year entrepreneurship program which accepted its first cohort of 12 producer innovators from an inaugural pre-accelerator program launched in the Eastern States in June.
Producers wanting to learn more about innovation in agriculture and how to become involved are invited to attend either workshop.
They can learn and share ideas for new products and technologies with like-minded producers from their area, hear about opportunities to access emerging technologies sooner and possiblly find support to take their idea to the next development level.
F2F was established by Sarah Nolet, a renowned pioneer in the local and global agtech market who heads agri-food venture capital firm Tenacious Ventures and food production sustainability and innovation consultancy Agthentic.
Co-founder is Christine Pitt, who was Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) general manager of value chain innovation for 18 years and more recently chief executive officer of the MLA Donor Company.
"We'd love to see more producers high up in the ag and foodtech space, bringing new, exciting and highly-valuable products to market," Ms Nolet said.
"It's a program with some big outcomes for those involved," she said of an eight-week regional program F2F has initiated with a series of workshops across the country.
The program aims to answer two questions for budding entrepreneurs - is their idea worth pursuing and what does it take to get started?
Ms Nolet said successful applicants would receive support, such as tools, coaching and mentorship.
, to test the potential of their idea and progress their concept from the paddock into the public domain.
Those accepted into the first program cohort include a Victorian grain grower who has developed a crop forecasting tool he uses on his own farm, a Queensland tea farmer working on producing green tea seed oil and a New South Wales sheep farmer who has developed a stock counting app designed to help prevent stock theft.
For more information on the WA workshops or to register an interest in attending, contact Alexander Leat, admin@farmers2founders.com or 0427 070 191.
