Winter 2026 Newsletter – From the Desk of Dr. Allan Gray
As we move into 2026, one theme continues to surface across our work with industry partners: the agrifood system is entering a period where insight alone is no longer enough. Execution, alignment, and speed now determine who wins.
From The Desk of Allan Gray
Winter 2026 Newsletter | Purdue DIAL Ventures
As we move into 2026, one theme continues to surface across our work with industry partners: the agrifood system is entering a period where insight alone is no longer enough. Execution, alignment, and speed now determine who wins. From shifts in consumer expectations to capital pressure across farming and food businesses, the organizations that succeed will be those that understand where the industry is heading and act on it early. We see that momentum forming and DIAL Ventures is helping translate insight into impact.
Future of Agrifood - Turning Insight into Impact for Winning Value Propositions Workshop
DIAL Ventures hosted the Future of Agrifood: Turning Insight Into Impact for Winning Value Propositions in October, a two-day, high-impact workshop designed for leaders across the food and agriculture value chain who want to sharpen customer discovery, reduce innovation risk, and build value propositions grounded in real demand.
This workshop brought together global food companies, farmers, input providers, and processors to work through the same discovery and innovation frameworks we use inside DIAL Ventures.
Featured speakers and panelists included leaders from: PepsiCo, Mars Wrigley, Conagra Brands, Rich Products, Belstra Milling, Fischer Seeds, and Templeton Family Farms.
Participants gained a clear competitive edge through hands-on strategy development tailored to their specific role in the agrifood value chain, leaving with actionable opportunities they can put to work immediately. The program combined practical innovation frameworks with real-world ROI, direct insight from senior leaders at food brands, and collaborative working sessions that translate agrifood research and market trends into concrete business decisions. Unlike traditional conferences, the experience was intentionally curated to foster meaningful collaboration and networking across the value chain, creating space to work directly with customers, suppliers, and peers while building strategies that are grounded, relevant, and future-focused.
Educating the Next Generation of Venture Builders
Last fall, Purdue University launched an inaugural venture-building course taught by me. My design for the course was inspired by the DIAL Ventures studio model. Over 16 weeks, student teams moved from problem discovery to validated, digitally enabled venture concepts rooted in real agrifood challenges.
Using Jobs-to-Be-Done and Value Proposition Canvas frameworks, students engaged directly with industry professionals to test assumptions, refine solutions, and build market-ready business models. Importantly, the intellectual property created through this course is owned by the students themselves.
Venture Concepts Emerging from the Course
Team 1: Originix: Building Reliable Supply Chains for Specialty Grains
The first presentation during the final pitch day event featured students Jonah Armstrong, Asa Dolbow Vann, Nico Intriago, and Avery Pound, who explored the misalignment between specialty grain processors and specialty grain producers in contracting their grains. They identified challenges among processors, specifically flour mills, in being able to identify farms willing and capable of growing the niche grains they demand. Their solution is a digital sourcing platform that provides visibility of farmers in a prescribed region for processors with farmers being verified by a review system. Originix solves sourcing issues for processors when the transparency of a direct-to-farmer merchandising approach is needed.
Team 2: SkillYard: Next Gen AgriFood Workforce Platform
The second team was made up of Dolapo Ajibare, Gustavo Stevanin de Souza, and Abigal Zelt. They developed a specialized employee management software designed specifically for the unique demands of farms and agricultural companies. Standard HR platforms often miss critical industry-specific needs. Their solution integrates essential features like incident reporting, tracking of animal health and mortality, specialized species-specific training, and streamlined certification management. They also built comprehensive tools for contract creation, applicant tracking, and a dedicated employee portal for tasks, benefits, and training progress. By gathering insights from industry specialists, they feel they crafted a platform that truly understands the agricultural workplace.MS student Avery Pound shared his thoughts on the experience:
“The concepts are rooted in real industry challenges, validated by professionals in the field, and positioned with clear, scalable paths to revenue. Using the DIAL playbook pushed us deeper into problem discovery than we ever expected.”
Portfolio Spotlight: Oaken Wins at RALLY 2025
DIAL Ventures portfolio company Oaken was named the Pitch Winner in the Ag/Food category at RALLY 2025 in Indianapolis in September.
RALLY Pitch winners receive access to up to $1 million in funding, recognizing companies with the potential to reshape their industries.
Congratulations to Shashi Raghunandan and the Oaken team, who continue to modernize agribusiness contract management. Oaken streamlines communications, document management, and payments between landowners and growers.
Digital Biology: The Convergence Creating Agriculture’s Future
The convergence of artificial intelligence and biological science is transforming agriculture from inputs to consumer products. In this article, I use Waymo autonomous vehicles as an analogy: over 200 cars in Phoenix and San Francisco all share the same AI driver, which has already accumulated more driving miles than any human alive and continuously improves with every experience. This same principle applies to agricultural AI systems.
Farm Disintegration and the Business Models That Will Replace It
Agriculture's traditional "collect more land" growth model is breaking down across the Midwest and being replaced by disintegration into specialized business functions. The capital requirements have become so high that farmers must seek capital from multiple sources, forcing the development of entirely new structural models similar to those already in the hog and produce industries.
Why Most Agtech Startups Fail (And How to Build One That Won’t)
A frank discussion about what truly drives agricultural innovation and change. The central thesis is straightforward: incentives drive behavior, period. Farmers invest in research and development for things they get paid for. When farmers are paid only for yield, seed companies focus on yield. When markets pay for non-GMO corn or high-protein soybeans, companies develop those products. Nutrient density and quality metrics will follow the same pattern once financial incentives are in place.
What’s Next
As we head into a new year, our focus remains clear: partnering with industry to co-create agriculture’s digital future. From venture development to innovation studios and research translation, DIAL Ventures continues to work where insight meets execution.
Thank you for your continued engagement and support.
Dr. Allan Gray
Executive Director, Purdue DIAL Ventures
From The Desk of Allan Gray
Winter 2026 Newsletter | Purdue DIAL Ventures
As we move into 2026, one theme continues to surface across our work with industry partners: the agrifood system is entering a period where insight alone is no longer enough. Execution, alignment, and speed now determine who wins. From shifts in consumer expectations to capital pressure across farming and food businesses, the organizations that succeed will be those that understand where the industry is heading and act on it early. We see that momentum forming and DIAL Ventures is helping translate insight into impact.
Future of Agrifood - Turning Insight into Impact for Winning Value Propositions Workshop
DIAL Ventures hosted the Future of Agrifood: Turning Insight Into Impact for Winning Value Propositions in October, a two-day, high-impact workshop designed for leaders across the food and agriculture value chain who want to sharpen customer discovery, reduce innovation risk, and build value propositions grounded in real demand.
This workshop brought together global food companies, farmers, input providers, and processors to work through the same discovery and innovation frameworks we use inside DIAL Ventures.
Featured speakers and panelists included leaders from: PepsiCo, Mars Wrigley, Conagra Brands, Rich Products, Belstra Milling, Fischer Seeds, and Templeton Family Farms.
Participants gained a clear competitive edge through hands-on strategy development tailored to their specific role in the agrifood value chain, leaving with actionable opportunities they can put to work immediately. The program combined practical innovation frameworks with real-world ROI, direct insight from senior leaders at food brands, and collaborative working sessions that translate agrifood research and market trends into concrete business decisions. Unlike traditional conferences, the experience was intentionally curated to foster meaningful collaboration and networking across the value chain, creating space to work directly with customers, suppliers, and peers while building strategies that are grounded, relevant, and future-focused.
Educating the Next Generation of Venture Builders
Last fall, Purdue University launched an inaugural venture-building course taught by me. My design for the course was inspired by the DIAL Ventures studio model. Over 16 weeks, student teams moved from problem discovery to validated, digitally enabled venture concepts rooted in real agrifood challenges.
Using Jobs-to-Be-Done and Value Proposition Canvas frameworks, students engaged directly with industry professionals to test assumptions, refine solutions, and build market-ready business models. Importantly, the intellectual property created through this course is owned by the students themselves.
Venture Concepts Emerging from the Course
Team 1: Originix: Building Reliable Supply Chains for Specialty Grains
The first presentation during the final pitch day event featured students Jonah Armstrong, Asa Dolbow Vann, Nico Intriago, and Avery Pound, who explored the misalignment between specialty grain processors and specialty grain producers in contracting their grains. They identified challenges among processors, specifically flour mills, in being able to identify farms willing and capable of growing the niche grains they demand. Their solution is a digital sourcing platform that provides visibility of farmers in a prescribed region for processors with farmers being verified by a review system. Originix solves sourcing issues for processors when the transparency of a direct-to-farmer merchandising approach is needed.
Team 2: SkillYard: Next Gen AgriFood Workforce Platform
The second team was made up of Dolapo Ajibare, Gustavo Stevanin de Souza, and Abigal Zelt. They developed a specialized employee management software designed specifically for the unique demands of farms and agricultural companies. Standard HR platforms often miss critical industry-specific needs. Their solution integrates essential features like incident reporting, tracking of animal health and mortality, specialized species-specific training, and streamlined certification management. They also built comprehensive tools for contract creation, applicant tracking, and a dedicated employee portal for tasks, benefits, and training progress. By gathering insights from industry specialists, they feel they crafted a platform that truly understands the agricultural workplace.MS student Avery Pound shared his thoughts on the experience:
“The concepts are rooted in real industry challenges, validated by professionals in the field, and positioned with clear, scalable paths to revenue. Using the DIAL playbook pushed us deeper into problem discovery than we ever expected.”
Portfolio Spotlight: Oaken Wins at RALLY 2025
DIAL Ventures portfolio company Oaken was named the Pitch Winner in the Ag/Food category at RALLY 2025 in Indianapolis in September.
RALLY Pitch winners receive access to up to $1 million in funding, recognizing companies with the potential to reshape their industries.
Congratulations to Shashi Raghunandan and the Oaken team, who continue to modernize agribusiness contract management. Oaken streamlines communications, document management, and payments between landowners and growers.
Digital Biology: The Convergence Creating Agriculture’s Future
The convergence of artificial intelligence and biological science is transforming agriculture from inputs to consumer products. In this article, I use Waymo autonomous vehicles as an analogy: over 200 cars in Phoenix and San Francisco all share the same AI driver, which has already accumulated more driving miles than any human alive and continuously improves with every experience. This same principle applies to agricultural AI systems.
Farm Disintegration and the Business Models That Will Replace It
Agriculture's traditional "collect more land" growth model is breaking down across the Midwest and being replaced by disintegration into specialized business functions. The capital requirements have become so high that farmers must seek capital from multiple sources, forcing the development of entirely new structural models similar to those already in the hog and produce industries.
Why Most Agtech Startups Fail (And How to Build One That Won’t)
A frank discussion about what truly drives agricultural innovation and change. The central thesis is straightforward: incentives drive behavior, period. Farmers invest in research and development for things they get paid for. When farmers are paid only for yield, seed companies focus on yield. When markets pay for non-GMO corn or high-protein soybeans, companies develop those products. Nutrient density and quality metrics will follow the same pattern once financial incentives are in place.
What’s Next
As we head into a new year, our focus remains clear: partnering with industry to co-create agriculture’s digital future. From venture development to innovation studios and research translation, DIAL Ventures continues to work where insight meets execution.
Thank you for your continued engagement and support.
Dr. Allan Gray
Executive Director, Purdue DIAL Ventures