Grand Farm opens new building aiming to put North Dakota at the forefront of agriculture innovation

CASSELTON, N.D. — Grand Farm hosted the grand opening of their new Innovation Campus shop west of Casselton, North Dakota, on June 10.

Elected officials, agricultural industry and business leaders came together for the opening to celebrate what was the culmination of years of hard work between a number of groups and organizations.

“This is a partnership like none other in the world of precision agriculture,” U.S. Sen. John Hoeven R-ND said. “Without a doubt North Dakota is leading this country, the world, really in precision agriculture.”

Hoeven also announced at the opening that this summer he will hold a field hearing of the Senate Agriculture Appropriations Committee at the

Grand Farm Innovation Campus

.

“It’s not only because we want to continue to shine a light on exactly what we’re doing here, but also because we’ve got a lot of people that want to come find out about what they’ve heard about,” Hoeven said. “This is really the future of agriculture in so many ways and that’s why so many people want to be a part of it and why they’re so excited about it.”

For Dennis Kemmesat, CEO of Frontier Precision, Grand Farm will help provide them easier access with growers to provide them with solutions for problems on the farm.

“Being able to showcase the really advanced technology out here that growers are going to need in the future to be productive and be profitable, I think that’s the most exciting part about it, because there’s not really one place that can showcase all of this technology,” Kemmesat said.

Frontier Precision is a Bismarck, North Dakota, based company that has been in the drone space around the last 10 years and entered the precision agriculture industry around a year and a half ago. Kemmesat said that as a North Dakota-based company, it was a natural fit to join in on the Grand Farm venture and he is excited to see what the future holds.

“We wanted to be part of being a sponsor and help grow that community,” Kemmesat said. “This was really an easy fit for us to be involved with and the ag side is something more new to us, but we’re excited to be in it.”

Grand Farm is also led by a grower advisory board which features a number of growers around the state who will help provide insight on the challenges, needs and issues facing producers in agriculture.

Kyle Courtney is a fifth-generation farmer from Oakes, North Dakota, where he grows corn, soybeans and wheat. Courtney is one of 11 producers serving on the grower advisory board.

“It’s a group of us farmers that get together on a quarterly basis to sit down with them and then explain our problems that we’re seeing in the field,” Courtney said. “They use their connections and reach out to people in the technology department, whether it’s universities, startups — that entire ecosystem, and explain the problems that we have as producers and try to figure out solutions to what we are running across.”

Courtney believes some of the biggest challenges he sees as a producer are herbicide resistance and the lack of trained labor, which both are issues being tackled by Grand Farm and he believes the new addition of the building to the campus “is going to be a huge ramp up for their game.”

“It’s great that they’re starting to work with these technologies before they become mainstream. Producers come out and see Grand Farm, what they’re building, and look at these technologies in the field to see if it will work for their operation,” Courtney said. “I think that’s an invaluable aspect and it gives us a glimpse around the corner to see what’s coming so we can prepare operations for those types of situations or for those technologies that are coming down the pipeline.”

The Grand Farm event served as a kickoff for

AgTech Week

, an agriculture and technology focused week hosted by a group of organizations in Fargo.

Kennedy is a reporter for Agweek based out of South Dakota. She grew up on an organic crop farm where her family also raises cattle in eastern South Dakota. She graduated from South Dakota State University in 2023 with a major in agricultural communication and minor in agricultural business. She enjoys connecting with producers and agribusinesses across the region while reporting on all things agriculture.