About - Grand Farm

WHO WE ARE

The Grand Farm Initiative was created to solve the biggest problems facing agriculture. It started around a community challenge and has transformed into a global leader in AgTech innovation.

OUR STORY

In 2017, local entrepreneur Barry Batcheller challenged the community to define our region’s major – a specialty that attracts innovation and new businesses to the area. What followed was an idea to lean into our region’s strong history in agriculture innovation and create a place where stakeholders across the globe could come together to solve the biggest challenges facing agriculture.

By 2018, local business and civic leaders had come together to champion the idea, led by Emerging Prairie. Local AgTech business owners, Kevin and Stacey Biffert, donated land to be used for the concept. By spring 2019, Grand Farm was positioned with land, partners, and projects. The U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue, came to North Dakota as a guest of Senator John Hoeven to help break ground on the Grand Farm Test Site. And in the fall of that year, Microsoft pledged $1.5 Million to support and accelerate Grand Farm.

In early 2022, Grand Farm was awarded a $10 Million matching grant by the North Dakota Legislature and State Department of Commerce to further advance agriculture technology through a world-class innovation campus.

Today, our partners are collaborating on cutting-edge autonomous and advanced agriculture technology innovations, and Grand Farm has grown its reach from regional to global.

GRAND FARM INNOVATION CAMPUS

The Grand Farm Innovation Campus, just west of Casselton, North Dakota, is a collaborative hub where the AgTech ecosystem comes together to solve agricultural challenges through technology and innovation.

Each growing season, the Innovation Campus hosts dozens of field trials in partnership with industry leaders, startups, and researchers to test and validate technologies in a real-world setting. These trials, along with tours, workshops, and community events, foster connections across the AgTech ecosystem and support the development of practical, grower-informed solutions.

CREATING AN ECOSYSTEM

“If you’ve ever been to the Grand Farm site, you know that it is more than just dirt. It’s where we bring people together to collaborate on some of the biggest issues facing the agriculture industry.”

— Brian Carroll, Chief Operations Officer of Emerging Prairie and Co-Founder of Grand Farm

MEET THE TEAM

MEET OUR BOARD OF DIRECTORS

MEET OUR GROWER ADVISORY BOARD

The Grower Advisory Board is a group of innovative growers who help advise Grand Farm on grower challenges, needs and issues. They work with our team to provide their insights to help guide our work in positive directions. By working with Grower Advisory Board members, we are able to identify new opportunities to advance technologies and get it in the hands of growers in our region.