Dairy Farmers of America (DFA), a Kansas City, Kan.-based cooperative owned by family farmers, said it hosted its third annual demo day involving companies participating in the 2019 DFA Accelerator program. The day concluded the 90-day immersive program, in which startups in two verticals — ag tech and dairy food products — worked directly with leaders from DFA, CoBank, Sprint, as well as other industry experts and mentors, to create strategic long-term partnerships.

“In selecting participating companies for the DFA Accelerator program, we looked at not only the potential of their innovations, but also at the opportunity to form long-term partnerships,” said Monica Massey, executive vice president and chief of staff at DFA. “Though demo day is the conclusion of the official 2019 program, we view it as the start-line for what we hope are potential long-term partnerships that will yield positive benefits to DFA and its family-farm owners using innovation and technology.”

With the DFA Accelerator, the selected ag tech and dairy food product companies received mentorship, connections and resources to help accelerate their growth. Features of the 90-day program included:

• Targeted, strategic meetings with the corporate teams to discuss business development, pilots and potential sponsorships.
• Mentoring from DFA staff and their networks, as well as from the investor, business development and entrepreneurial communities.
• Business-building sessions around product, brand, marketing and entrepreneurship.
• State-of-the-art workspace facilities.

To learn about the participants in the 2019 DFA Accelerator class, visit https://www.dairyfoods.com/articles/93506-dairy-farmers-of-america-announces-startups-in-2019-accelerator-program. Visit dfamilk.com/accelerator for additional information about the program and the participating companies.