NSF Engines Development Award: Advancing sustainable agriculture technologies (WI, IA, MN)

This Regional Innovation Engines Development Award is focused on sustainable agriculture innovation across Wisconsin. Globally, agricultural systems must become more productive and resilient to feed an expected population of 10 billion by 2050. Those systems must also confront declining biodiversity, unsustainable resource use, labor inequality, and climate change. The agricultural sector in Wisconsin is a source of strength contributing $104.8 billion annually to Wisconsin's economy and 11.8% of the workforce. An innovation engine dedicated to sustainable agriculture across Wisconsin will address these global and regional challenges while nurturing healthy ecosystems and supporting sustainable land, water, and energy management. They must balance trade-offs between production yield, labor, water, energy, land, and climate. This Engine Development Award builds on a partnership between the innovation and technology management offices of the University of Wisconsin (UW) System - WiSys, Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), and UW-Milwaukee Research Foundation (UWMRF). The award will leverage the WiSys VentureHome® network to provide Wisconsin's physical and digital infrastructure to accomplish these goals and facilitate collaboration among new and existing collaborators across academia, industry, government, nonprofits, and farms. The technical plans combine the latest scientific advances enriched by traditional farmer knowledge with bold socio-economic initiatives that support innovative new ventures and develop a tech-savvy and diverse agriculture workforce. Farmlands across the Midwest need economically viable strategies to reduce the impact of climate change on agricultural production, mitigate agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, solve water quality problems, and enhance the production of underutilized specialty crops that improve consumer health. The subsequent NSF Engines development application attracted thirty-five Wisconsin partners who provided letters of collaboration, including thirteen collaborators who will pilot innovative programs through subcontracts. Together, the network will harness use-inspired research across UW System into novel and emerging technologies from animal and plant breeding and genetics to next-generation sensors and digital agriculture to support improved food-production systems based on principles of ecological intensification. Through the WiSys VentureHome network, they will address the regional gaps in the lack of accessible entrepreneurial support for high-tech, scalable startups, access to early-stage risk capital, and mentorship from experienced founders. Funds from this Development Award will serve as seed capital to supercharge existing university-industry-nonprofit collaborations, attract and train under-capitalized workers in non-metropolitan communities, and catalyze a new Regional Innovation Engine. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.