Farming and food technology startup incubator program, F-300 AgFoodTech Startup Accelerator, hosted a kick-off reception at the Mentholee Norfleet Municipal Building in Newberry on Wednesday. 

Nearly 50 attendees comprised of city of Newberry officials, representatives from the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) and Santa Fe College, and other agriculture and technology community members.  

The event aimed to celebrate the accelerator program’s launch and rally around a shared vision of positioning Florida to be the “Silicon Valley of agriculture.” 

“We identify technologies that can help reduce the costs and increase profits on farms, and then we want to do the reverse,” said Kamal Latham, CEO at GBM Global Solutions, LLC. “We’re going to find out some of the challenges that are happening on the farms and then look to identify the technologies that can help address them.” 

The Startup Accelerator is a three-month professional development program operating out of the red, one-room schoolhouse next to Newberry High School. It aims to nourish startup businesses with the resources they need to grow.  

The program stems from Newberry’s F-300 AgFoodTech Innovation Park, a planned agricultural development project that features a consortium of 15 agriculture and food tech enterprises—such as UF/IFAS—invested in growing agricultural and food technology in Newberry to boost the community’s economy and save the family farm. 

After applying and being accepted, accelerator program participants are matched with potential clients from the consortium’s network who could benefit from the business. The businesses are also provided with mentorship and workshops to foster future growth. 

Dr. Scott Angle, UF/IFAS’s senior vice president for agriculture and natural resources, said the push for developing and investing in agricultural technologies comes from recognizing that agriculture is the second largest industry in Florida, as well as proactively preparing for higher food demands in the future. 

With resources like land decreasing, immigration restrictions limiting labor supply and tariffs driving up prices, Angle said farmers will need all the help from technology they can get in order to feed an ever-increasing population. 

He also said the investments in agriculture technology will also help capitalize on developing innovations for precision agriculture, used for processes such as spraying fields and harvesting, where a farmer would want to target specific crops. 

“This is truly the future of agriculture,” Angle said. “We need machines, we need artificial intelligence. [UF] has hired well over 100 faculty to work on this. We’re building an AI agriculture center outside of Tampa, that’s the research side. We’re also working on the educational side. We’re calling this the AgTech Accelerator, and that is to help train people around the state to work in these new industries that are just now starting to develop and eventually will grow.” 

Angle also credited Newberry’s foresight to invest in training UF and SF students in agricultural technology, which he said will attract more businesses to build up the community’s economy and produce more opportunities for research. 

“I think there are great things to come,” he said. “We need to bring some more businesses. In California, taxes are high there, they’re running out of water, roads are too crowded. Come to Newberry, there’s no traffic jams here.” 

At Wednesday’s event, representatives from two of the accelerator program’s agricultural technology companies presented their prototypes to attendees. 

The first company was Profeed, a livestock feed management business based in Ukraine. They aim to improve the quality of feed and reduce feed costs through a device that’s installed on feed mixers. The device links to a tablet in a tractor where a farmer can track and adjust feeding processes online.  

Profeed’s Andrii Sydoruk said 50% of Ukrainian farmers have already incorporated the tool as part of their feeding processes. 

“I would like to bring this movement here to United States, Florida, this great community,” Sydoruk said. “When Profeed becomes the first feeding solution in the United States, it won’t just be our success, [but] the success of [the whole] community and all these people present here.” 

Moochanics was the second accelerator company presented. Consisting of UF undergraduate and grad students, the team developed an artificial cow stomach for evaluating the digestive effects of various feed formulations and medications on cattle. 

“Moochanics represents a blue ocean opportunity for investors,” said Garrett Leath, a mechanical engineering senior at UF and CEO of Moochanics. “Our technology is protected by a provisional U.S. Patent, and no other company produces this technology on a commercial scale.” 

Newberry Mayor Jordan Marlowe shared that the seed for his passion in seeing Newberry’s agriculture thrive is deeply rooted in his family. His grandfather was one of the farmers who founded the Newberry Watermelon Festival, the longest continuously running watermelon festival in the U.S. 

“I’m very excited for all of the companies that are going to join us here in Newberry,” said Marlowe. “Thank you, guys, for signing on to this project, being our first to believe in Newberry. Our motto in Newberry is ‘we believe in Newberry.’ So, if you believe in us, we’re going to believe in you right back.”