Landus Launches Innovation Center | Feed & Grain News
Landus unveiled its new Innovation Center dedicated to cultivating unique strategic partnerships and collaboration opportunities between farmer-owners and global innovation leaders to drive a more sustainable and profitable future of farming on Tuesday.
Located at the Landus location in rural Ralston, IA, the Innovation Center features a variety of emerging technologies and moonshot ideas that will propel ag forward. The investment showcases a revolutionary approach to what cooperative relevancy needs to become in order to serve the needs of the rural farming landscape of tomorrow.
“The agriculture value stream is upside down today,” says Matt Carstens, Landus president and CEO.
“As more and more industries look to us to solve the latest problems of sustainability, consumer desires, rural vitality and food security it’s critical that we enable our farmers to actually drive innovation and co-author the solutions of tomorrow.
“We must start putting farmers at the center of ag innovation and better connecting with outside industries and end users if we want to arrive at a more sustainable and profitable future of farming,” Carstens continued. “This is a non-negotiable stance by our farmer-owners and Landus is rising to these challenges.”
The Innovation Center by Landus showcases the company’s new-age approach to the traditional ag cooperative model. The rural location that once served as a cubicle-filled office space has been revitalized to accommodate an ongoing rotation of strategic partners, emerging tech show spaces and modern collaboration spaces.
A 10-acre test plot on site will host field trials dedicated to proving out new sustainability solutions and demonstrating the latest ag technologies.
Farmers visiting the center can also interact with experts from the new Landus GROW Solutions Center that offers a virtual access point to instant and ongoing ag advice for farmer questions spanning from sustainability improvements to carbon markets to value-added grain programs.
In addition to the opening of the Innovation Center, the company has also invested in a first-of-its-kind Innovation Cell to redefine the future of farming around emerging technology, sustainability, and long-standing farmer legacies. The Innovation Cell will bring the best and brightest thought leaders in science, technology and small business to collaborate with Iowa farmers at the Innovation Center and pioneer new ideas.
Landus is a farmer-owned agricultural cooperative headquartered in Iowa. We employ about 600 full-time employees at locations in more than 60 communities to serve our 7,000 farmer-owners. We are Iowa’s largest agricultural cooperative providing unmatched scale, expertise, facilities, and logistics.