An Indiana-based ag tech company is a big winner at the annual convention for American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) in San Antonio!
Gripp, which offers farmers an operator-centric way to keep records of assets in combination with communication tools to keep everyone connected, receives a total of $100,000 for winning the Ag Innovation Challenge, courtesy of AFBF in partnership with Farm Credit.
Gripp is led by Co-Founder and CEO Tracey Wiedmeyer and Jenkin Lee, co-founder and chief product officer.
“Winning the Ag Innovation Challenge represents continued validation to not only the challenges facing farmers today but also the way we’ve decided to solve them,” said Wiedmeyer. “Farmers need cost-effective, no-nonsense tools that work for them.”
Wiedmeyer says their product has a wide variety of uses around the farm.
“We provide operational recordkeeping and communication tools for farmers, so we allow them to track anything important to their operation that they can put a QR code on, a sticker, a magnet, a zip-tied PDC Card. Tracking isn’t necessarily unique. The thing we’ve added that’s novel for Gripp is the ability for your team to have communications around that thing,” he says.
The Gripp system offers a number of benefits, including language translation.
“The benefits on the tracking side are there’s very little software used to alert folks when to fix something or what the service intervals are, and so the simple part is being able to remind folks of when things need to be maintained or things that need to be fixed, perhaps after the harvest season. They’ve got a lot of Spanish speakers. A lot of agriculture does, so we automatically translate Spanish to English back and forth,” says Wiedmeyer.
The American Farm Bureau’s Innovation Challenge has provided instrumental support in getting Gripp off the ground.
“The awareness that they’ve brought to Gripp, I mean, they’ve introduced introduce us to some wonderful people across Ag – farmers, industry experts. Just a ton of confidence in terms of what we’re solving exists everywhere in ag. We’re so grateful to be part of that program, and Farm Bureau is just bringing it to folks that need this solution in every state, and that makes all the difference for us,” he says.
Gripp was one of four finalist teams that received $10,000 and competed at AFBF National Convention in front of a live audience of Farm Bureau members, investors and industry representatives for the top prize. Prior to that, ten semi-finalist teams participated in a virtual pitch round in October 2024 with three judges representing various sectors of the agricultural supply chain.
“Indiana Farm Bureau is so proud of what Gripp has accomplished on the national stage at AFBF convention,” said Randy Kron, President of Indiana Farm Bureau. “Indiana is a tech hub here in the Midwest, and this win spotlights how entrepreneurs in the ag innovation space can efficiently support farmers in their mission to feed the world.”
The other final four teams that participated in the challenge were Labby from New York, who was named runner-up in the contest, Halio from Utah and RhizeBio from North Carolina.
This is the 11th year of the Ag Innovation Challenge, which was the first national business competition focused exclusively on rural entrepreneurs launching agriculture-and food-related businesses.
Learn more about Gripp at www.Gripp.ag.
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Sources: Gripp, Inc., American Farm Bureau Federation, Indiana Farm Bureau, NAFB News Service
