On Tuesday, Nasdaq-listed global agribusiness cooperative CHS, a farmer-owned provider of precision agriculture, grain, fertilizer, energy/fuels and processing solutions, announced that it has made a strategic investment in North Dakota‘s Grand Farm Innovation Site, an agtech demo and research facility that will serve as the base for an agriculture startup ecosystem in the Fargo area.
CHS has been involved with Grand Farm since 2020, in its capacity as founding partner–along with Microsoft, Bremer Bank, and Moroccan phosphate fertilizer company OCP Group–of startup franchise Plug and Play’s agtech-focused Fargo location.
Along with the investment, CHS will partner with Emerging Prairie, a North Dakota-based agriculture startup organization, to provide spaces and opportunities for agtech companies and researchers to test ideas and pursue solutions for existing and emerging farm and agriculture industry challenges.
“Collaboration is at the center of what Grand Farm is about, bringing together startup entrepreneurs, Fortune 500 companies including CHS, university researchers and farmers,” said CHS enterprise strategy and chief information officer David Black. “Working together will help accelerate technological innovation on the farm, the cooperative system and throughout agriculture.
“CHS brings an on-farm perspective to the innovation process, which we hope will result in technologies that improve farming, from agronomy and farm management solutions to supply-chain and marketing advances,” he adds. “This is one example of the connections we are creating to empower agriculture.”
Last month, CHS announced plans to invest $73 million to expand and renovate its Myrta Grove, Louisiana grain export terminal, an expansion that will move 30 percent more grain bushels each year to global customers from the terminal, which handles wheat, soybeans, corn, rice DDGS (distillers dried grains with solubles) and specialty grains for export to customers in Asia Pacific and Latin America.
