Co-Ops Target Return on Innovation with New Capital Fund

There’s at least three advantages the team at Growmark and CHS are looking to find wit its $50 million capital fund, Cooperative Ventures:

1. Visibility into disruption
2. Outreach to emerging technologies
3. New ways to measure success

Cooperative Ventures is a new capital fund aimed at ag tech startups announced by Growmark and CHS. The two cooperatives will be equal partners in the $50 million fund, which will focus on breakthrough technologies for the ag industry.

As David Black, chief information officer at CHS and Brad Drake, Innovation Lead at Growmark, share on The Scoop podcast, the cooperatives have been operating in the ag tech space and working with startups. But now is the time to “do more” and engage in a new way.

They share how Cooperative Ventures will be bringing the lab of agricultural fields across the country to the table to drive technology development.

And they predict that it will open a new way to measure return on innovation for the cooperatives, for farmers, and for startups.

Hear more on The Scoop podcast:

And read more here.