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Innovation

Essential to the culture of Dairy Farmers of America, innovation moves our Cooperative forward, brings us together and makes us stronger. While innovation often means targeting solutions to problems and looking at new ways of doing things, innovation at DFA is ultimately about finding opportunities — ones we might not even know exist yet — to position the Cooperative and our family farm-owners for future success. From researching and developing new products to take to market to implementing technology that creates efficiencies in our plants, we are committed to achieving innovation in all that we do.
Colab imageColab image

Innovation

Essential to the culture of Dairy Farmers of America, innovation moves our Cooperative forward, brings us together and makes us stronger. While innovation often means targeting solutions to problems and looking at new ways of doing things, innovation at DFA is ultimately about finding opportunities — ones we might not even know exist yet — to position the Cooperative and our family farm-owners for future success. From researching and developing new products to take to market to implementing technology that creates efficiencies in our plants, we are committed to achieving innovation in all that we do.

Colab: DFA's innovation program

As a community of family farm-owners and employees around the country — and the globe — we are always looking for ways to be more collaborative across the Cooperative. Our innovation program, called CoLAB, makes this possible. Initiatives in the CoLAB program include:
Our 90-day program to grow ag-tech and dairy food product startup businesses.
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An online idea submission forum that puts our family farm-owners’ and employees’ ideas into action.
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Brainstorming sessions to inspire creativity and collaboration among employees.
CoLab conversations logoCoLab conversations logo

Colab: DFA's innovation program

As a community of family farm-owners and employees around the country — and the globe — we are always looking for ways to be more collaborative across the Cooperative. Our innovation program, called CoLAB, makes this possible. Initiatives in the CoLAB program include:

Colab accelerator in action

Held once a year, DFA's CoLAB Accelerator is a 90-day program to grow up-and-coming ag-tech and dairy food startup companies in the dairy industry.

Through our experts, DFA provides mentorship and educational programming, which helps startups unlock more resources. In turn, the startups offer new opportunities, exciting technology and valuable resources to our family farm-owners, as well as nutritious dairy-based products to consumers or helpful insights to our business.

Watch the recording of our past Demo Days — the culmination of DFA’s CoLAB Accelerator program where participating startup companies give their pitches to an audience of potential customers, partners and investors.

DFA innovation spotlights