Land O’Lakes, Inc. has issued the Drone Challenge, to urge developers to create solutions for precision agriculture. A $140,000 grand prize will be awarded, along with two $5,000 runner-up awards.

“We’re offering the Land O’Lakes Prize to accelerate the development of drones for the ag industry. We believe with a few more years of work and the direction we’re providing, backed by insights from our network of 300,000 farmers, we can create a marketplace for drones that ultimately creates better solutions for the farming community,” said Mike Macrie, chief information officer for Land O’Lakes.

As a farmer-owned cooperative, Land O’Lakes offers its member-owners a rich Ag Tech portfolio through its Geosys and WinField® United businesses, including tools like R7® by WinField. Combining this world class imagery and existing precision agriculture tools with an automated, scalable drone solution has the potential to provide even more valuable decision making data to farmers.