Grow North, the local initiative that supports food and agriculture innovation, is preparing to rebrand after joining the Naturally Network, a nationwide group fueling the natural and organic consumer industry.
As part of that new affiliation, Grow North will become Naturally Minnesota, where it will work to expand Minnesota's status in the industry beyond its borders. It celebrated that change the first night of its annually held, multiday event featuring the industry's innovations — Food, Ag, Ideas Week — earlier this month.
Grow North’s executive director, Allison Hohn, recently spoke to Minne Inno about how Minnesota's strength as an agricultural powerhouse, with innovation coming from corporate giants to tiny startups, can be leveraged to make the food and agriculture industry more efficient and sustainable.
The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Coming out of Food, Ag, Ideas Week, what can we look forward to seeing in the food and agriculture space in Minnesota?
Everyone shares a common goal to figure out how to make our food system work for the future; one that is equitable and accessible for all and mitigates depletion of our natural resources. A lot of the work at companies, both large and small, was all pointing towards this. I had numerous people come up at the end and say, all the exact right people I needed to talk to were there this week. Coming out and looking forward, it'll be, how do we, as a community, keep fostering those connections and offering up the opportunities for people to meet and share those ideas?
How can Minnesota continue to boost its status in the food and agriculture industry?
That partnership between large and small is so necessary. There's ways to engage large corporations like General Mills or Cargill or others. When we have all of that institutional knowledge just sitting here, it's almost a crime that it's not as accessible as it is. So, part of it is just creating those collisions. And then, part of it is just we have so many people working on the same thing. How can we leverage collective work that's happening to advance faster? Minnesotans need to band together and be more open about what they're doing and shout it from the rooftop.
How might Grow North's operations change now being a part of the Naturally Network?
We're able to elevate our ecosystem up onto a national stage with the other who's who of major innovation hubs for food across the country. One thing that the Naturally Network is looking to us to lead in is on the agriculture side; we have such deep roots here. Grow North has been so ingrained and is supported by so many folks on the ag side that it was important to us to bring that to the table. The analogy some of us joked about is, when you're about to see a rocket launch and they start firing the engines and it's all percolating, but it hasn't hit liftoff yet. But it's that 10 to 20 seconds of energy build, that's what it feels like where we’re at right now with our ecosystem, and that this has just been a massive push of the flywheel forward for us.
