Former state representative and founding member Brady Walkinshaw began the evening with a brief speech emphasizing that Grow Further will be blazing new territory by building awareness of the wide development impact and “bang for the buck” of agricultural research, and by empowering individuals to better understand and help shape the future direction of agricultural innovation.
Next, agricultural economist and Grow Further founder Peter Kelly shared his vision for the organization, organized around three main points: 1) Agriculture matters and there’s a long history of great innovations. 2) Small-scale farmers aren’t getting the innovations they need just to keep up with climate change and population growth out of bureaucratic institutions. 3) By engaging members of all different professions in a way that’s never been done before in agriculture, Grow Further will create value for both members and society.
Then we broke into small groups to do an activity to simulate how our members will make decisions to fund agricultural innovation projects, looking at several sample proposals from a group of researchers passionate about food security, from a graduate student, and from a farmer. This spurred a lively and interesting discussion about the impact we can have.
We’ll be looking through attendee feedback and using that to plan our next event soon. In the meantime, here are some ways you can help support us as we move forward with our planning and prepare to launch operations later this year:
● Consider joining our board: We are actively recruiting our founding board. If you or someone you know would be interested in learning more, please contact us.
● Volunteer: would you like to help shape our operations and growth? We welcome volunteer support in areas including marketing, IT, strategy development, member recruitment, and more. Please contact us to discuss opportunities to get involved.
● Tell a friend! If you have friends or colleagues that would be interested in supporting our work, please tell them about us and invite them to our next event.
Thank you again for your support of our work. We look forward to keeping you informed about our progress and our upcoming events.
Peter Kelly
Grow Further Founder
