Leadership insights from Billi Hunt, executive director of America's Cultivation Corridor.
There hasn’t been anything “lazy” about this summer in Iowa’s ag and bioscience sector. We’ve seen a number of announcements, ribbon-cuttings and openings and businesses across the sector are marking key milestones and collaborations. It’s not a surprise, as agricultural innovations have been getting their start in Iowa for more than a century. I reflected on this at a recent field day event in Ames hosted by PowerPollen, where they demonstrated a new ground-breaking approach to improve pollination in seed corn and grain crops. Fully autonomous, AI-enabled ground vehicles used machine vision along with precision spraying to distribute pollen in corn, with a goal of optimizing pollination and yields.
It’s not a coincidence that this field day was just a few miles away from where Henry A. Wallace conducted research on hybrid corn at Iowa State University, and a short drive from where the Hi-Bred Corn company started (and is still home to Corteva Agriscience and Pioneer brand seed today) in 1926. Pioneer teams are launching their 100th sales season this summer, celebrating both the history and continued innovations that deliver increased yields and productivity to farmers in Iowa and around the world.
Iowa’s unique combination of forward-thinking farmers, global agricultural leaders, world-class research and growing entrepreneurial ecosystem make it the perfect place for the next generation of ideas to start and grow. In fact, the “technology adoption curve” that many of us have studied in marketing or economics classes over the years was created at Iowa State University based on farmers’ adoption of hybrid corn in the 1930s and 1940s.
If you would like to learn more about the ecosystem and resources to help grow your business in any sector of agriculture – plant, animal, bioscience, renewable energy, digital ag and more – register for the “Grow in Iowa” webinar series hosted by America’s Cultivation Corridor. The series will feature Iowa leaders and startup founders with firsthand experiences to share.
Published August 2025.