M-ACRE
Maritime Agritech Co-operative for Robotics Entrepreneurs
M-ACRE is a not-for-profit co-operative of innovative engineers, farmers, producers, programmers, and anyone wanting to accelerate innovation, deployment and adoption of robotics and technology in agriculture and related industry. We aim to remove capital and cost barriers that often block Agritech users and innovators from testing new ideas and concepts. Members of M-ACRE will have access to robots, software, mentors, and other resources to help them develop, prototype, and use argitech robotics to solve real problems and make a difference to agriculture operations today.
Our co-operative includes entrepreneurs, start-ups, students, mentors, farmers, and subject matter experts in robotics and agriculture. If you want to talk to people that eat and breathe automation, robotics, and agriculture, you have come to the right place.
Who is M-ACRE
Anyone who shares the objectives and goals of M-ACRE can join, benefit and help the other memebers.
- Entrepreneurial members are looking for real, actionable, problems to solve.
- Participating farmers and producers offer real world, hands-on testing, problem definition and solution feedback.
- Experts provide guidance, support, technical trouble shooting, trade-studies, software support, hardware design reviews, and more.
- Research institute relationships give members access to students, laboratories, and agricultural research equipment and farms.
- Business and innovation hub partners have all the tools and training members need to take their proven ideas to market.
Our growing community includes members from all sides of the agritech revolution. Whether you have a problem, an idea, a skill-set or just a passion to contribute to this important sector, you can find a place in M-ACRE. We are helping entrepreneurs unearth the next big technological advancement in the Agritech sector. We are helping farmers adopt existing technology with shorter ROI and reduced capital risk. Our members have joined as a community to advance their skills and help each other.
We are passionate, and we are M-ACRES.
Why M-ACRE?
Agriculture is arguably the world's most important sector and agriculture is under intense pressure from multiple fronts. Sustainability, land use, fresh water shortages, growing population, climate uncertainty, carbon emissions, etc.
Agriculture needs rapid technology innovation and adoption. Small, medium and local producers face an increasing need to shift to accessible automation in order to survive.
M-ACRE was formed to help accelerate innovation, deployment, and adoption of robotics and technology by reducing cost, technical challenges and skill gaps. Users and innovators hit a wall when their idea requires high capital costs before they can even test a concept.
Capital cost and implementation risk is a barrier to not only farmers, producers, but also for users who want to try or test technology before investing in a solution and customizing it to work for them.
The equipment cost presents a impossible hurdle to most entrepreneurs, startups and innovators who want to test a concept or bootstrap a prototype before seeking outside investments and early stage venture capital. Atlantic Canada has a highly skilled and educated work force and a strong entrepreneurial and start-up ecosystem. However, most new startups are limited to software, data collection, AI, retail, etc.. not by skill, ambition, or need, but by the cost of admission.
Robots, automation, and technology acquisitions are expensive.
M-ACRE can help.
M-ACRE allows members to pool and share resources that all members can use to develop, test, and prototype their own incremental solutions.
Most robotics and automation solutions today share common hardware, software, and controls, which M-ACRE can provide.
What M-ACRE Can Do
We are here to remove barriers between ideas, testing, and execution. We provide hardware and software from strategic partners using the industries’ best in robotics, machine vision, sensors, navigation, automation, and more! We will work with other innovation hubs to connect members and users with business and financial resources needed to grow innovation from ideas to world class products.
Our community can use the pool of shared hardware to conduct research, develop proof of concepts and build minimum viable products that they can then leverage to launch new products, secure funding, or kick-start new companies.
M-ACRE has volunteer mentors with industry, academic and business experience. These mentors want to help as they can. If members want more help, they are free to negotiate paid services or partnerships amoung themselves which M-ACRE can help facilitate.
What M-ACREE Won't Do
M-ACRE is a non-for-profit co-operative and therefore we do not do anything without the support of our membership. All members have a voice in how M-ACRE operates, but always within the confines of a non-profit co-operative and always with the intent to further the goals and values of the co-operative. We do not and will not own, share, or use proprietary IP development by our members unless explicitly permitted to do so. The co-operative owns equipment and provides common services that our members can use.
Our Values
What do we value?
Co-operation is key to agile and fast paced innovation. Share what is common. Keep all your IP.
We foster a community amoung members locally and around the world. wMembers helping members. Sharing common resources. Tackling common problems. Learning common lessons
We believe Atlantic Canada is a beautiful place to live and that it's capable of growing sustainable and healthy produce for its residents. We want to help Atlantic Canada be sustainable and competitive against food importation via technological assistance.
We provide technological platforms for you or your business to quickly test new ideas. M-ACRE resouces are member resources. Focus on what makes your solution unique and leverage the rest from other M-ACREs.