News

DFA announces new accelerator cohort

8 Apr 2019

Dairy Farmers of America (DFA), a national cooperative owned by family farmers, has announced the companies participating in the 2019 DFA Accelerator program.

These seven companies will engage in a 90-day immersive program, which is part of the Sprint Accelerator program that runs through June.

Startups in two verticals — ag tech and dairy food products — will work directly with leaders from DFA, CoBank, Sprint and other industry experts and mentors to create strategic, long-term partnerships.

“It has been rewarding to help mentor these entrepreneurs, and we’re thrilled to get started with another class for this year’s DFA Accelerator. Plus, we’ve found that we learn along the way too,” said Monica Massey, executive vice president and chief of staff at DFA. “By working and collaborating with ag tech and dairy food startup companies, we’re helping develop solutions that will not only provide value for our farm families and their operations, but will also help drive consumer demand for dairy.”

With the DFA Accelerator, the ag tech and dairy food product companies selected will receive 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 senior 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 provided at Sprint Accelerator in Kansas City’s Crossroads Arts District

The 2019 DFA Accelerator class includes:

+ 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

+ Cattle Care (San Francisco): Using low-cost video cameras, Cattle Care detects, recognizes and tracks every cow as well as business processes and makes decisions for the farmer about the treatment of a particular cow or a whole barn

+ 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

+ 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 flavour 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 flavour