Catalyst Agri-Innovation Society

The purpose of Catalyst Agri-Innovation Society is to build bridges, linking silos of innovation and opportunity. We have selected Agriculture as the foundation as food is the common denominator of life. Producing food is part of the biological and cultural, as well as economic fabric of a civilization. It has been said that “What happens out in the countryside in one century invariably affects the cities in the next century”. Today that time delay, between cause and effect, has been reduced to the speed of thought. The massive advancement of global integration means we can no longer rely on the foundations we stand on, or the defences that have kept us “safe”. We believe that for the good of all, perhaps the very survival of all, we must return to the thinking of centuries ago, in that there was an understanding that we are “in this together”. We believe that we must bring together think tanks that roll up their sleeves, and get their hands dirty. We envision a world where the microbiologist and the chemical engineer have lunch with the botanist and the entomologist talking about how the bug protecting the plant excretes a fluid that enhances the bacteria processing the fertilizers. Over the next days each of those lunch friends have coffee with the sociologist, the economist, and the psychologist. In nature we see the power of the pollinator, a humble Mason bee for example. That is the role we see for Catalyst Agri-Innovation Society. We will act in the role of cross pollination, in institutionally agnostic, multi faculty, multi-disciplinary, multi genre, parallel study facilities, addressing input and output streams of farming. We will serve as incubation centers and launching pads. We will insure that the students of, and for life leave with the principle that we are all “in this together” attached to every work they will create. It is a fact that a strong and vital urban society has always been supported by a strong and vital rural society. General decline in the Roman empire, the British empire, and the Russian Communist empire paralled if not followed the decline of their rural communities. The same thing is happening in North America now, but for the most part, there is no awareness or understanding in society at large.