At the 2023 Oklahoma Cattlemen’s Convention and Trade Show, Radio Oklahoma Ag Network Intern Maci Carter had the chance to visit with Amarie Bartel, Rural Economic Development Coordinator of the Oklahoma Farm Bureau. Bartel and Carter talked about the Oklahoma Grassroots Rural & Ag Business Accelerators program.
The Oklahoma Grassroots Rural and Ag Business Accelerators program is a collaborative rural development initiative from Oklahoma Farm Bureau along with national and state-level partners that develops Oklahoma-based innovators creating ideas, technologies and products creating economic opportunities in rural Oklahoma.
Bartel explained the goal of the Oklahoma Grassroots Rural and Ag Business Accelerators program is to bolster, refine, and empower agricultural innovations of communities with populations of 50,000 individuals or less. These accelerators are educational curricula that Oklahoma Farm Bureau is using to strengthen and support businesses and build up small Oklahoma communities in return.
Within the program, Bartell said there are two different tracks for innovators to be involved in. The first track, she said, is called Cultivate Oklahoma, and the second is called Activate Oklahoma.
Cultivate Oklahoma, a pre-accelerator, provides an agriculture-focused curriculum powered by OKFB’s partner AgLaunch to bring innovations that have on-farm applications to reality through a farmer innovation model. From cultivating transformative ideas and technologies through collaboration with a national network of farmers to preparing innovators for the national AgLaunch365 accelerator, Cultivate Oklahoma brings the next generation of agricultural innovation to life.
“Then we’ve also got a cohort called Activate Oklahoma, which is a true business accelerator for off-farm innovations,” Bartel said. “They are innovations that could have happened anywhere, but they just so happen to take place in a rural community.”
The Activate Oklahoma pipeline connects innovative rural Oklahoma businesses with numerous resources and assistance with curriculum provided by Oklahoma Small Business Development Centers. The Activate Oklahoma track is designed for any rural-based business with an innovation or product that will bring economic opportunities to Oklahoma’s rural communities.
For the entire program, Bartel said 43 applications were received across the state between both cohorts. Bartel said that Oklahoma Farm Bureau accepted six applicants for Cultivate Oklahoma and six applicants for Activate Oklahoma.
“They have already gone through a business basics boot camp in each curriculum, which was essentially designed to make sure we were all building on a firm foundation so that we could move forward,” Bartel said. “We covered things like customer discovery, market opportunity and intellectual property, ensuring they all had that firm knowledge to build off of.”
Each individual accepted for the program, Bartel said, has been paired with a product mentor, which she described as a “thought leader” in their field, to help with areas such as research development and refinement of the product.
“For our Activate Oklahoma folks, we will be hosting a demo day in late November where they can put out all that they have worked so hard on for the folks in the ecosystem,” Bartel said. “Then, we will wrap up and get ready to go again with the program in the future.”
Coming up for OKFB is their demo day for these innovators before they wrap up for the year.
“Well, we think that there’s a need, so we are going to ramp up to do it again,” Bartell said. “In fact, we’re looking to run two cohorts for each program next year, so looking to open applications in early January, and we will hit the ground running in 2024.”
Bartel said for those looking to apply for the next Oklahoma Grassroots Rural and Ag Business Accelerators program, applications will be available in January.
