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.
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.
Leave a Reply