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Inside this issue...

A game plan for agriculture

By Edgar Olson
Executive Director

It is not often you can equate baseball with agriculture, but believe it or not, there are parallels.

Anyone who followed the Minnesota Twins this past season knows they had a terrific year. Their success was no fluke; the Twins won because they’d put together a group of home-grown players who grew and jelled together as a team. Rather than hoping to reverse their fortunes immediately by signing a group of high-priced free agents, the management took the time to develop young, raw, but talented players into a team.

The same blueprint can be followed for agriculture. New developments and market opportunities aren’t free agents to be purchased by the highest bidder. They must be recognized and then nurtured. AURI, Minnesota agriculture’s research and development arm, is in the business of identifying and developing innovative agricultural products and processes.

In this issue of Ag Innovation News, we’re focused less on where we’ve been in value-added agriculture. Instead, we look forward to emerging opportunities that run the gamut, from new food and personal care products to ways to utilize ag products for fertilizers, soil stabilizers, fuel sources, industrial products and more.

For some agricultural products, the future is now. After years of development, they are becoming market realities. Others are still young and raw and need some time for their potential to be fully realized.

But just as the Twins use Minnesota’s own “farm system” to develop talent, AURI is leading the state’s real farm system in developing value-added winners for Minnesota’s economy.