DOVER – Young people may be behind some of agriculture’s next biggest innovations and more than $225,000 was up for grabs to make it happen during the first Capital One DSU Innovation Venture and pitch competition.
The event, held at Delaware State University on Monday, brought out hundreds of students from around the the nation as they chanted “defy the odds, defy the odds” from the gym of Delaware’s only Historically Black College or University.
“At Delaware State, innovation is not just a concept. It’s who we are. It’s how we prepare our students for classrooms, their homes and their communities. . . It’s how we shape our future,” Interim Provost and Chief Academic Officer Dr. Patrice Gilliam-Johnson told the crowd before they heard final pitches that could provide a new path forward for farming ventures of all sizes.
Students who prepared innovative ideas for the pitch competition were also enrolled in accelerators to help them perfect those pitches before competition day. At the end of the day, three teams were awarded a portion of the $225,000 seed money, along with additional accelerator programs and business licenses to see their ideas come to life through the Capital One DSU competition including:
- Tier I (Middle/High School) – $50,000
- Solution Station, Code Differently, Wilmington, Del.: A photo-recognition app that uses AI algorithms to identify agricultural pest
- Tier II (Undergraduate) – $75,000
- Agribonum, Delaware State University, Dover, Del.: AI solutions that automate and rejuvenate current food supply chain practices.
- Tier III (Graduate) – $100,000
- AgroVision, Morgan State University, Baltimore, Md.: An AI-powered modular hydroponic farming system enabling sustainable, automated, and space-efficient food production.
Students from South Carolina State University also won a people’s choice award through a sponsorship from Agilent Technologies.
“This is a unique and creative approach to a problem,” Capital One Delaware Market President Joe Westcott said of the new event during an exclusive interview with the Delaware Business Times. “This is a narrow industry problem statement. We’re at the intersection of agriculture, technology and entrepreneurship and how we can leverage [artificial intelligence] and other technology to solve problems in the area.”
That technology continues to have a significant impact on agriculture, not just in Delaware, but globally, he added.
“We’re a credit card company, rather a bank. . . and we are kind of a leader in technology and a leader in leveraging AI to build solutions for customers,” Westcott told DBT.
He added, “I think we’re going to see some very, very creative AI solutions that will actually have some real business value.”
What came next awed leaders in attendance like Westcott, including Governor Matt Meyer, Delaware’s Secretary of Agriculture Don Clifton and pitch competition judges homestead professional Andrea Haritos, Delaware Division of Small Business Director C.J. Bell, Innovation Delaware Prosperity Partnership Director Noah Olson and Black Girl Ventures Strategic Partnerships Manager Shante Patridge.
Middle school, high school and college students brought their pitches to the crowd, including innovative, AI-based ideas that would detect illness in poultry flocks quicker, identify diseases and pests in crops, support the health of farm workers and more.
Clifton encouraged the filled room by sharing stories of his own growth through the agriculture industry that led him to his current government role while celebrating his memories of innovations from Delaware’s past.
“I want to touch on innovation in a different light. You’re going to hear about all the technical aspects. . . but I want to talk about the innovation in terms of the impact it can have on our lives,” he said, telling the students in the room of a time when his own father cultivated lima beans with the help of mules.
“In his lifetime [Clifton’s father], we’ve gone from that, which seems very primitive, to the technology of GPS guided tractors, sprayers, combines and drones which can steer themselves and they collect data that farmers use to optimize the investment that they make in their crops,” he explained. “Who knows what the young people in this room are going to provide us in the next lifetime. I’m looking forward to that.”
Others encouraged the students, too, like U.S. Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester, who recalled a time when she once met with a farming family at their home, and she noticed they could tend to the irrigation systems from an iPad while cooking dinner.
“Agriculture is not just about the family farm from the 1900s; it is about what is happening today. It is about all of the innovative solutions that agriculture can solve for us, big problems like health care. We can deal with things like our environment and saving our climate crisis through agriculture. We can save big things like world hunger. . . So I am just proud of what you are doing,” she told the students from the stage.
