Website brings together agriculture and innovation
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
by SUSAN MANN
The story of agriculture at the forefront of innovation that supports advances in food, health, the bio-economy and life sciences is being told on a new website launched last month.
The website www.aginnovationontario.ca is a project of the Agri-Technology Commercialization Centre, which in turn was recently formed by Ontario Agri-Food Technologies, Soy 20/20 and Bioenterprise Corporation.
Tyler Whale, president of the Ontario Agri-Food Technologies, says the Agri-Technology Commercialization Centre is unique in Canada.
The website describes the centre as a single point of contact for entrepreneurs, researchers, and companies that are growing businesses in the agriculture and biotechnology fields. It provides them with a cross section of expertise, such as technology transfer, marketing, sales, financial and legal.
Bioenterprise Corporation deals with agri-innovation companies across Canada needing help with various things, such as preparing a business plan or sourcing financing; Soy 20/20 advances the bio-economy through soybeans; and Agri-Food Technologies works to help the agri-food sector to access new markets, access technologies and it facilitates research collaborations. Agri-Food Technologies “put mutually beneficial parties together in support of the agri-food industry,” Whale says.
The website will feature original articles, images, videos and audio files produced by other farm organizations and industry stakeholders. The work will be distributed to the media along with being shared widely through social media.
“The site is about telling the story of the innovation in agriculture and raising awareness to help support and advance the sector of agri-food,” Whale says.
It will highlight leading-edge projects and not be just a news site. It won’t feature a new salad dressing but will focus on, for example, a new poultry lighting system that can help hens produce more eggs, eat less feed “and give the birds a better lifestyle,” he notes.
The centre developed the website with the assistance of the Vineland Research and Innovation Centre, University of Guelph, the Agricultural Research Institute of Ontario and the Livestock Research Innovation Corporation. BF