Keystone Cooperative, a farmer-owned agricultural co-operative in Indiana that has operated for more than a century, has joined the One Health Studio run by Indiana-based Alloy Partners and invested an undisclosed sum in it. The move gives the co-op a direct role in creating and scaling new agrifood companies rather than waiting to buy the results.

Alloy launched the One Health Studio in 2025 with animal health company Elanco, with the aim of building businesses where animal, plant and human health meet. The State of Indiana also backs the fund, which is housed at Elanco’s headquarters. It sits alongside Alloy’s other venture studios, including one with universities, a fintech studio with Huntington Bank and a Midwest-focused studio supported by the Walton Family Foundation.

Keystone supplies agronomy inputs, grain marketing, animal health services and energy to more than 20,000 farmers across the Midwest. In the studio it will take an advisory role, bringing knowledge of what farmers need and can contribute. “Having all those different variables of our farm-owned business, that’s how the One Health Studio was very appealing to us, because we touched so many pieces of that,” said CEO Scott Logue, who says the co-op will bring “the real-world, practical side of the farmer” to company building.

Logue draws a parallel with ethanol, which created large new demand for crop farmers earlier this century and which Keystone did not engage with directly. “We didn’t get involved in ethanol very directly, didn’t capture the opportunity for our farmers, and with our scale today, with our financial position, these are some risks we can take,” he said, arguing that a coming boom in animal and human health innovation could do for growers what ethanol did.

Alloy has moved eight concepts into incubation through the studio. A spokesperson told AgFunderNews that three are in animal health, two in plant and soil health and three in human health, and that each is meant to touch at least two of the three fields.

The wider problem Logue wants to address is market access, which he calls the biggest issue for farmers over recent decades, whether through ethanol, exports, processing or feed. Being directly involved in the channel that connects the farmer to the end use, he argues, is the surest way to open new markets, and he hopes more agricultural retailers will take part in building solutions rather than simply receiving new technologies. “When the farmer has these opportunities, they succeed,” he said.

Source: AgFunderNews