Historically, the farmer has grown his business by making his farming operation larger. However, land is a finite resource, and the value of land doesn't reflect the productivity of grower agricultural crops. The ICPB strives to identify other ways to achieve additional value for the corn grower.
To help reach this goal, the ICPB has developed two strategies for corn farmers to grow their business and capture additional consumer dollars.
- Increase the farm share of the consumer dollar: The ICPB is
trying to develop strategies to increase the farm share of the consumer dollar by capturing value from intellectual property through research and development.
- Capture part of the consumer dollar that is spent on non-food products: The key focus of the ICPB has been to develop corn-based products that replace petroleum-based industrial products. By expanding markets in the non-food applications, the grower will capture more consumer dollars spent on non-food items. The corn grower will benefit by capturing value from intellectual property through research. Ultimate opportunity will be for growers to invest in further processing of their product into industrial uses.
The goal is to conduct research on new products that meet the priorities of the corn grower and have economic opportunity for commercialization with industry.
The key to making the initiative successful is capturing the value from intellectual property. The ICPB would implement a license agreement and sublicense the technology to industry for commercialization. If the technology is applicable, the ICPB would work with farmer-owned processing plants for commercialization. If the technology requires other company involvement, then the ICPB would explore the potential for farmer-owned investment as an option for business development.
| ICPB Role |
Industry Partner Role |
University/Laboratory Role |
| Market assessment for commercialization | Commercial Development | Seek grants to support research |
| Analyze competing technology | Market assessment | Conduct scientific experiments |
| Implement license and legal agreements | Research/license agreement | Quarterly progress reports |
| Find research and seek grants | Pilot plant or scale-up production | Maintain confidentiality |
| Analyze opportunity for grower investment | Production | Seek patent protection |
| Seek commercial partners | Quality control | Review of competitive technology |
| Promote commercialized products | Product sales and distribution | Commercial development |
| Understand the product concept | Product promotion | Technical analysis and support for industry scale-up |
| Analyze market opportunities | Increased applications and utilization | |
| Manage research projects |
To research a project, the ICPB would become a partner with a university, research laboratory or a private company to develop technology. For the commercialization process, the ICPB would work with an industry partner.