“The primary value of Ag Ventures Alliance is not just the businesses we help to start, it's the development of our members' business and entrepreneurial skills,” says Hofstrand.

“If your new business thrives you can make money, but if it fails there is no bailout from Ag Ventures. As an organization, we receive no public funding.” Organized as a cooperative, Ag Ventures' 1,100 members pay a one-time membership fee for the option of participating in emerging business ventures…or not.

“We are a private company with 20 directors,” Hofstrand says. “If there is an idea for a business, they start to investigate that idea. Ag Ventures can provide financial help and expertise. If it fizzles, they don't owe Ag Ventures any money, but if it thrives, the founders owe Ag Ventures a multiple of the original amount used. Ag Ventures does not own or control value-added businesses, although it has a minority ownership in many of those it starts or works with.”

The Aquaculture Venture illustrates how Ag Ventures helps a new business idea develop and grow.

After farming for 30 years, Keith Gelder looks forward to adding value to his crops with shrimp farming. As co-chair of the Ag Ventures Aquaculture Committee along with his son Brian, Gelder has spent the last four years pursuing a domestic shrimp-production facility. Ag Ventures' contacts helped to write and secure a USDA Value-Added Producer grant and feasibility study. The concept originally grew out of a desire to use waste heat from an ethanol plant, and to add value to farmers' DDGS.

Four years of research found top priorities to be consumer shrimp preferences, a skilled aquaculture workforce and a warm Gulf Coast climate, Gelder says.

Brian Gelder, an ag engineer postdoctoral student at ISU, adapted a South Carolina DNR-designed “raceway” system. The self-contained oval produces shrimp more competitively and sustainably than conventional shrimp ponds, he says. The raceway design recycles water, and supplants 20-30% of a fishmeal ration with DDGS, based on ISU research.

“We think we can produce larger, more uniformly sized shrimp better suited to the market, improve food safety and shrimp quality and distribute production year-round,” Gelder says.

The Ag Ventures Aquaculture Committee has developed a business plan and negotiated a potential partnership with an experienced Alabama shrimp producer. He, in turn, will tap into the raceway system and the marketing ideas of the Iowa-based Ag Ventures Aquaculture subsidiary.