Farm’InnLab
February 11 2022Farm’InnLab is a hub that offers technical and scientific support to innovators in the farming sector, located on AgroParisTech’s experimental farm in Grignon (Yvelines department, Greater Paris).
Introduction
Farm’InnLab supports startups and small, medium, and large companies who bring innovation to animal production (dairy sheep and cattle), plant production (large crops), or on-farm energy production. It offers the possibility to test and improve new equipment (machinery, robots, tools, buildings, sensors), products (fertilizers, active substances, foods, additives), or agricultural production assistance models/software.
It also offers facilities for testing innovative technical processes involving plant or animal production. Farm’InnLab’s support capacity comes from the infrastructure of the farm itself (cultivated plots, livestock, buildings), its analytical and experimental tools, and the technical and scientific expertise of the farm and associated AgroParisTech/INRAE laboratories.
Farm’InnLab’s Work
The unit is organized into three teams which:
-
Offer customized scientific and technical support;
-
Makee infrastructures (plots, livestock, buildings), experimental facilities, and tools for analysis available to project developers, subject to availability and needs;
-
Provide regular project monitoring and mobilize the scientific and technical skills required to develop the project;
-
Encourage sharing and collaboration between students, faculty, technical staff, and project leaders.
Prerequisites and Acceptance Profile
Project developers must be working on innovations in a field covered by Farm’InnLab.
Farm’InnLab Projects
Startups hosted:
-
BAOBA: Farming app to manage herds and plots for farmers and their partners;
-
ORTIX: A traceability solution that automatically records farming activities and monitors input directly from a tractor;
-
AIHERD: Smart video monitoring solution for dairy cows;
-
Nénufar: First startup to be hosted in 2014 on the Grignon farm site, testing the first Size 1 prototype for the Nénufar biogas recovery pit. Nénufar is now an SME based in Montreuil (Seine-Saint-Denis department, Greater Paris) with activities throughout France. It is able to meet a vast spectrum of needs involving the production, transport, processing, and use of biogas.