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It’s been a great year for Cultiv8.

In partnership with Acadia University, Cultiv8 agricultural sandbox is a playground for those who are still dedicated to their studies, but are looking to test the entrepreneurial waters. A place for budding entrepreneurs where they can collaborate with industry on tackling real problems and challenges. They work to provide solutions that support growth in agriculture and possibly create business opportunities.

“I’ve been blown away by the student excitement around Cultiv8 and entrepreneurship as a whole. This year has been full of highlights. We have participated in business competitions and have had students go on to regional and even national competitions. We have experimented with numerous business ideas in our agricultural sandbox, and the ideas keep coming” said Jolene MacEachern, Cultiv8 Coordinator.

Highlights of the year

Students had the opportunity to engage in many internal and external opportunities this year. The first semester programming was focused on showcasing entrepreneurship and supporting the generation of new ideas. Cultiv8 Club was the hub of activity whereby students met every week to listen to guests talk about their entrepreneurial adventures and tricks of the trade.

The first external event was when Cultiv8 students joined the youth of Hope Blooms at the Halifax Seaport Farmers Market to learn about the challenges of running a social enterprise. In November, four students traveled to Acadia University, for the Start It Up! Weekend. There they worked with team members from Acadia for 29 hours straight to develop business ideas and solutions.

Also in November, Cultiv8 took their own spin on a Sprint competition - which is a get together of people involved in a project to further a focused development of the project. Cultiv8 created SPRINT AG where teams were formed to work on problems collected from the agricultural industry.

The second semester was more focused on the development of ideas and started off with a bang at Start up Weekend. This weekend was facilitated by Dr. Mary Kilfoil of the Norman Newman Centre and she followed up with offering Starting Lean- Agriculture, an opportunity to build your business model for academic credit.

Other opportunities that were not credit courses but offered the chance to include entrepreneurship development within a course, were the Foodcamp program and the Design course. Foodcamp is a partnership with Perennia and Acadia and was an opportunity for students and industry to learn more about the process of food product development.

The Design course is a requirement for second year engineering students. This year students were able to connect with industry to build a prototype that solved a problem, and connected with Cultiv8 to learn how to pitch that solution as a possible business venture.

Pitch Ag 2016

It is thought that all students participating in the above mentioned programs would benefit from the opportunity to present their learning at the end of the semester. This would not only provide a showcase for Cultiv8 and the Faculty of Agriculture, but comes with its own training program to develop the pitching skill of those involved.

This led up to Pitch Ag, a competition during the year-end celebration of Cultiv8. Jolene MacEachern lead the celebration by highlighting the tremendous year Cultiv8 has had. This was followed up by student testimonials from Peter Thiesen, and Holly Fisher, who spoke about the opportunities entrepreneurship has brought them.

The Pitch Ag program & competition provides young entrepreneurs and students with the opportunity to develop a clear and concise pitch. Nine teams presented their pitches and they were judged on predetermined criteria such as customer validation, the business model, and execution. The judges for the competition were Jo Ann Fewer, CEO of Perennia, Dr. Jeff Norrie, Research Manager for Acadian Seaplants, and Laurie Jennings, Vice President of Masstown Market Ltd.

Up for grabs was $7000 worth of prize money, which was divided up among the Top Five teams.

·         1^st place, 3MEALS the team of Holly Fisher and Hartley Prosser. Holly and Hartley are proposing a protein supplement made out of meal worm flour that is dairy free and sustainably produced.

·         2^nd place Elarvator, the team of Steven MacGillivary, Brette Holland, Muhammad Baig, Emily Merks, Alberto Serracin-Pitti, Yinggi Zaho. This engineering team designed a scalable mealworm growing environment for research or commercial purposes.

·         3^rd place was Bundled Bee, the team of Rachel Hirtle, Soanlys Santiago Garcia, Jackie McClelland, Ben Lynds, Eric Welch. Their product was a heating pad for bee hives to keep bees warm in the fragile spring season.

·         4^th place was Agriculteur, the team of Arin Douglas and Jonathan George who designed a platform to connect restaurants and local food producers.

·         5^th place was NS Acadian Pollination, made up of lone team member Dhadi Surendar Reddy, who has a plan to provide long term pollination services to Nova Scotia farmers.

It is obvious that there is an interest in exploring new ideas in agriculture.

 “With all of the momentum we have brought out this year, I am so excited for the 2017 year and I can’t wait to see what Cultiv8 will accomplish.”