The 2019 DFA Accelerator program: An execution of innovation through partnerships

Dairy Farmers of America, a national cooperative owned by family farmers, hosted its third annual demo day involving companies participating in the 2019 DFA Accelerator program. Startups in two verticals — ag tech and dairy food products — engaged in a 90-day immersive program and worked directly with leaders from DFA, CoBank, Sprint and other industry experts and mentors to create strategic, long-term partnerships.

“In selecting participating companies for the DFA Accelerator program we looked at not only the potential of their innovations, but also at the opportunity to form long-term partnerships,” said Monica Massey, executive vice president and chief of staff at DFA. “Though demo day is the conclusion of the official 2019 program, we view it as the start-line for what we hope are potential, long-term partnerships that will yield positive benefits to DFA and its family-farm owners using innovation and technology.”

With the DFA Accelerator, the selected ag tech and dairy food product companies received mentorship, connections and resources to help accelerate their growth. Features of the 90-day program include:

• Targeted, strategic meetings with the corporate teams to discuss business development, pilots and potential sponsorships
• Mentoring from DFA staff and their networks, as well as from the investor, business development and entrepreneurial communities
• Business building sessions around product, brand, marketing and entrepreneurship
• State-of-the-art workspace facilities

 

 

The 2019 DFA Accelerator class

Ag tech

• Bezoar Laboratories (Bryan, Texas): Bezoar’s current innovation is a patent-pending probiotic for cattle that, when paired with nitrate, decreases their methane production by 50 percent, while providing additional benefits
• Healthy Cow (Toronto, Canada): Healthy Cow is an ag-biotechnology helping dairy farmers to produce more wholesome, natural and nutritious milk while simultaneously reducing their dependence on antibiotics and hormones
• Labby (Boston): Labby is an artificial intelligence-powered smartphone platform for food and agro analytics

 

 

Dairy food products

• Brooklyn Buttery (Brooklyn, N.Y.): Brooklyn Buttery is reimagining butter for the 21st century as a fun, convenient product for home cooks to turn up the flavor on their dishes using sustainably sourced ingredients
• Numa (Bridgewater, N.J.): Numa makes all-natural sweet, chewy milk treats with just six natural ingredients and four grams of protein
• RifRaf (Brooklyn, N.Y.): RifRaf offers cool, creamy ricotta cups that are one-part cheese and one part unexpectedly delicious flavor

Visit dfamilk.com/accelerator for additional information about the program and the participating companies.