$10 million initiative to help advance farming technology at Grand Farm

Grand Farm leaders say they expect this move to attract thousands to North Dakota

FARGO, N.D. (KVRR) – The North Dakota Department of Commerce picks Fargo’s Grand Farm Education and Research Initiative for a 10 million dollar matching grant to advance agriculture technology.

“It’s my pleasure today to announce that based on the legislative actions of the 67th legislature signed into law that gave the grant authority to the North Dakota Department of Commerce. I’m here to announce on behalf of them that they have awarded a $10 million matching grant to grand farm to advance autonomous ag. I just think we’ve got to take a moment with gratitude all of us and go man how unusual it is that we’re able to do this here, this isn’t happening everywhere, and this creates just an incredible opportunity,” North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum said.

“What we’re going to do is, we’re going to build a bigger vision, we’re going to identify the permanent location of Grand Farm and build a big campus and innovation center around it. Bring people from all over the world into this region and talk about ag tech,” Director of Grand Farm Brian Carroll said.

Grand Farm leaders say they expect this move to attract thousands to North Dakota and further solidifies the state as a national leader and potentially one of the world’s leaders in agriculture.

Governor Burgum says with about 90 percent of North Dakota being on a farm or ranch this is about the entire state.

“Our farmers run a lot of dollars through their operations nowadays, it’s big business but we all know that running businesses at the end of the day the only thing that counts is the bottom line. What’s left at the end of the day, relevant to how many dollars you go through and technology is the way we can make farming more profitable,” Republican State Senator Ron Sorvaag of Fargo said.

“The challenge really for family farms is help nowadays because everything you do on a family farm takes a high level of skills and technology with it. If you don’t have the ability to hire somebody you’re going to need different ways to solve that issue for your farm. It could be seed development, it could be measuring moisture, it could be determining how much level of fertilizer you may need, all that stuff is part of this,” Watne said.

Grand Farm plans to be aggressive with picking out a destination for the new campus and raising more money to build it.