Farmer-led Innovation Challenge underway | agrinews-pubs.com

Instead of seeing insights across a farm, producers are often looking at data pieced together from a complex network of farm-specific software and consumer software such as Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets. This disconnect costs hours of duplicative work.

The goals are to:

1. Reduce manual data entry by automating the aggregation of data from farm operating systems.

2. Make it possible to quickly validate data quality — examples: field-level information, seed inventory, accounting entries.

3. Automate alert notifications based on farmer-defined standards and user roles.

“The farm economy is facing extended periods of economic pressure,” said Courtney Kingery, CEO of Indiana Corn Marketing Council and Indiana Soybean Alliance.

“This is a unique opportunity to bring together innovators and producers with the goal of improving farm income through software. The challenges are defined by farmers and judged by farmers.

“They are the ones who will decide which of the software solutions being proposed most efficiently and effectively address one of the producer-defined challenges. The farmer connection is what sets this innovation challenge apart from the rest.”

Once registered, participants will have access to a panel of Indiana farmers and agbioscience advisers to guide them.

Final submissions are due Dec. 4 and the winner will be announced Dec. 12 at the Indiana Farm Bureau State Convention. The winning team will receive $25,000.

To learn more about the program, visit www.AgriNovusIndiana.com/Challenge.