What We Heard at the AgBioScience Workshop

Agbioscience is $82.3 billion of Indiana’s economy and 152,000 jobs, per AgriNovus CEO Christy Wright, who emceed. But 2026 has been a strange year for the sector: four of the five major crop science companies are mid-restructure, net farm income is down 24% from its 2022 peak, and about 11% of Americans are now on a GLP-1, which is quietly reshaping food demand. Money in the space is getting more selective, not less.

Fishers Didn’t Happen by Accident.

Toph Day sat down with Mayor Scott Fadness, who’s been in office since 2016. His read on public-private partnership: don’t run economic development like a form and a spreadsheet. He said the companies that stick around are the ones that feel like they’re “part of some sort of story,” not just cashing an incentive check. His tip for founders trying to work with a city: skip the pitch, just go tell your story first. “We just want to hear about what they’re trying to accomplish” before anyone talks square footage or dollars.

On CERTA (his 32-mayor regional coalition): he built it by never mentioning Fishers, and Fishers took a pass on funding rounds early on to earn trust. Every vote in three-plus years has been unanimous, which he called “wild” given the range of communities involved.

His blunt take on where the entrepreneurial energy in Indiana is right now: down from the peak tech-boom years, and probably has to be rebuilt community by community rather than as one statewide push.

AI Panel: Less Hype, More Receipts.

Moderated by Vince Wong (BioCrossroads), with Dave Corcoran (Purdue Dial Ventures), Ben Brame (Contango), and Corey Tuinstra (Lewis & Clark Partners).

The throughline: cost and time to build software has collapsed. Corcoran: what used to take $250K–500K and 6-12 months for an MVP now takes weeks. Brame said his 3-person dev team is shipping at a pace that would’ve taken 20 developers five years ago, and “we rarely handwrite code anymore.” Tuinstra shared that one portfolio company has stopped hiring senior developers altogether and only hires AI-native juniors, freeing up budget for sales and product instead.

But adoption lags building. A Purdue survey found 52% of farmers don’t think AI can help them. Corcoran’s line: “This industry moves at the speed of trust.” His practical filter for who to target first: not the farmer nearing retirement who’s still paying off a million-dollar tractor, but the next generation taking over the farm, or larger operators running it like an actual business with ROI expectations on a real timeline.

Real examples on the floor: a West Lafayette company (Solinftec) building a $10K autonomous weeding robot that lives in the field and sprays only what it identifies as a weed, versus a $1M John Deere pass. Farmers are also starting to snap photos of crop issues and ask an AI model before texting their agronomist. And someone flagged Wabash Heartland Innovation Network as an existing “trusted validator” for new ag tech, similar to how Blue Cross Blue Shield vets health tech for its members.

One Health Panel

Mitch Frazier (IBJ, moderating) with Tim Bettington (Elanco), Brad Fruth (Beck’s Hybrids), and Ben Lewis (Alloy Partners). Bettington’s example of the convergence thesis: spinosad is used in crop protection, treats fleas and ticks in animal health, and treats lice and mites in humans — one compound, three industries, three separate multi-decade commercial lives.

Fruth’s story was the best specific in the day: Beck’s quietly acquired a 15-year-old, sitting-on-a-shelf trait called SoyIQ back in February — a non-GMO high oleic soybean whose oil beats olive oil. Nobody had commercialized it. They planted the entire available seed stock immediately and expect to be sold out for two years, largely because it adds nearly $1/cow/day of value when fed to dairy cattle. His line on strategy: “we keep showing up at One Health, not always knowing how we’re going to impact this space.”

Scaling Panel

Elliot Parker (Alloy Partners), Eric Young (BiomEdit), Tim Dixon (AgriNovus). The funding numbers Dixon shared: Indiana companies raised just $33M in Q2, the lowest since 2018, out of ag/food nationally pulling in $1.9B across 163 companies in Q1 — against $250B invested overall that quarter. Less than 1% went to the sector.

Advice several panelists pushed back on:

• “Raise as much money as you can” — Young: BiomEdit deliberately raised only to their next inflection point, to avoid over-diluting and over-promising.
• “Chase a huge TAM” — Parker: “the riches are in niches.” Start narrow, find customers, expand later.
• “Don’t worry about your exit path” — Parker now tells founders to decide upfront whether they’re building to flip in 3 years or building for decades; the operating playbook is completely different.

Parker’s read on corporate partnerships: don’t walk in feeling superior to slow-moving corporates — their caution is often a feature, not a bug.

Get your value proposition down to one sentence someone else inside that company can repeat when you’re not in the room.

Closing tip that’s easy to skip past:

At the end of the AI panel, someone asked the room who uses an agent harness (OpenClaude/Ironclaude-type tools) daily. About a third raised their hands. The suggestion: if you learn one tool right now, learn one of these.

Next up from Elevate: an October 29 workshop on student venture and entrepreneurship. You can register for it here.