Agronomy Research Plot Technician Intern

One-Ton sausage donation fuels Thanksgiving meals. For the second consecutive year, Keystone is giving back to rural communities by donating 2,000 pounds of ground pork sausage to four regional food banks. This repeat contribution reinforces the farmer-owned cooperative's commitment to strengthening food security across 33 counties in Indiana. This year's contributions include 500 lbs. of ground pork sausage to the below regional food banks: - Community Harvest Food Bank in Fort Wayne - Second Harvest Food Bank in Muncie - Food Finders Food Bank in Lafayette - Cultivate Food Rescue in South Bend Alongside its protein donation, Keystone has teamed up with the Land O'Lakes Foundation to further support local communities. Each participating food bank will receive an additional $1,000 contribution from the Foundation, made on Keystone's behalf. "Keystone's swine business is built on feeding families, and we believe that responsibility extends beyond our customers to the communities we serve," said Kevin Still, President and CEO of Keystone. "We're proud to partner with these incredible organizations to help ensure families have access to nutritious meals during the holiday season." "Protein is one of the most requested items by those Hoosier Ag Today LLC serve, said Kier Crites Muller, CEO of Food Finders. "We are thankful to Keystone for this extra donation of pork as we head into the holiday season. It's a true reflection of their mission to "Lead. Serve. Grow. Embrace." These donations underscore Keystone's commitment to supporting local communities and promoting food security, arriving just in time for Thanksgiving distributions. In 2025, Keystone donated more than $1.4 million into rural communities through food security efforts, agriculture education and leadership programming and farm and energy safety efforts. "Protein is the single most requested item from our neighbors facing food insecurity, and thanks to Keystone Cooperative's generous donation of 500 pounds of pork, 500 families will have the protein they need to enjoy nourishing meals this Thanksgiving," said Sunni Matters, Chief Operations Officer at Second Harvest Food Bank of East Central Indiana. As Hoosier Ag Today LLC enter the holiday season, when the need in its local communities grows even more urgent, commitments from donors like Keystone to serving neighbors ensure families can gather around the table with comfort and strength during these uncertain times." Fourteen percent of U.S. households reported food insecurity on average between January and October 2025, up from twelve percent in 2024. This means roughly 1 in 7 households struggled to afford enough food at some point this year. "Keystone's contribution of pork to Community Harvest Food Bank and our fellow food banks in northern Indiana reflects a deep commitment to community and compassion," said Carmen Cumberland, President and CEO of Community Harvest Food Bank. "This gift will bring nourishment and hope to many families in need, and we are sincerely grateful for their partnership." "At Keystone, we understand the importance of supporting those in need, not just during the holidays, but all year long," said Nathan Hedden, Vice President of Swine & Animal Nutrition. "Food insecurity impacts countless families, and we're honored to help ease that burden by providing nutrient-rich protein to those who need it most." Food insecurity continues to rise as families face higher grocery costs nationwide. According to USDA data, food prices are up about 3.1% year-over-year, with grocery costs increasing 2.7%. Protein categories have seen some of the sharpest spikes - meats, poultry, fish, and eggs are up more than 5%, and beef alone has surged over 10% in some regions. These increases, driven by supply chain pressures and persistent inflation, mean the average American now spends roughly $235 per week on groceries, putting additional strain on households already struggling to access affordable, nutritious food. "Keystone Cooperative's donation demonstrates the power of community partnerships in fighting hunger. Their 500-pound pork donation to our Meat Hunger Program helps us deliver wholesome, protein-rich meals to people in need. This donation comes at an especially meaningful time, as the holidays approach and the demand for food assistance increases across our community. The pork will be distributed through our pantry network, which serves more than 220 partners across St. Joseph, Elkhart, and Marshall Counties. We're deeply grateful to work alongside partners who share our mission of No Neighbor Hungry, No Food Wasted." Fay Flournoy, Cultivate Food Rescue, Director of Mission Advancement.

Why Land O'Lakes is piloting a new AI tool called 'Oz' in bid to help boost profits on cost-pressured american farms. A farmer walks along his rows of seed corn during harvest in temperatures over 100 degree heat, (37 C) Tuesday, July 29, 2025 near Albany, Ga. American farmers are facing intense business pressures from all sides. Crop prices have been plunging, while tariffs have pushed up the cost of fertilizer, machinery, and other farming equipment. And then there's the issue of labor. The U.S. agricultural workforce tumbled by 7% from March through July of this year. "How can we help farmers be more profitable?" It was a critical question that Leah Anderson, president of Land O'Lakes' crops insights division WinField United, and the dairy cooperative's Chief Technology Officer Teddy Bekele, asked each other about a year ago, before economics on the farm became even more dire throughout 2025. Knowing that farmers are always angling to achieve the most profit per acre possible, Land O'Lakes developed and is currently piloting a new AI tool called "Oz," which can help agronomists as they work with farmers to map out an ideal crop production plan that accounts for different weather variations, soil health, pest risks, and seed selection. All those decisions ultimately factor into a successful yield for the farmer. Oz relies on Land O'Lakes' insights, including millions of data points compiled over a 20-year period by the Minnesota-based Fortune 500 company. Land O'Lakes worked with Microsoft to build the Oz mobile app, which is currently an internal pilot program and designed to replace a physical 800-page book that agronomists rely on to make recommendations to farmers. Anderson says she is "very confident" that Land O'Lakes will be able to prove the return on investment for Oz to justify a full deployment. "At the end of the day, a farmer is extremely pressured from a profitability perspective and so they need to know that what they're using is actually going to have an impact," says Anderson. "They cannot waste a dime right now." Land O'Lakes is monitoring Oz's ability to help improve farm yields with the right insights, the time saved in conversations between agronomists and farmers, and ease pressure on the workforce. Anderson says that one out of every four retail agronomists exit the organization each year and that with such high turnover, there's a lot of pressure on the more senior staff to train newer employees. An AI tool like Oz could make onboarding easier. "The reality is it's hard to recruit into rural America," explains Anderson. "It's hard to get folks to stay and develop their careers." Oz is one component of a multiyear strategic partnership with Microsoft that Land O'Lakes announced on Wednesday, as the AI assistant is built on models within Azure AI Foundry. The companies say that Land O'Lakes has migrated more than two-thirds of its IT environment to Microsoft Azure and is piloting Microsoft Copilot licenses. Microsoft has also partnered with Land O'Lakes for generative AI training, including town halls and "data and AI days." The pair vows to collaborate on additional AI-enabled solutions focused on the agriculture industry in the future. "This infrastructure is the foundation for innovating with AI," says Lorraine Bardeen, corporate vice president of AI transformation at Microsoft, adding that the teams "collaborated on Oz's architecture, model selection, data structure and indexing and system prompts," which optimized the accuracy of responses. Some use cases that Land O'Lakes is deploying with Oz include helping an agronomist as they map out a farm plan before growing season, determining which biopesticides or biofertilizers are needed for pest control or to make nutrients more available in the soil for plants to use. Another way the tool can be used is during the growing season when adjustments may need to be made if weeds get out of control or an invasive insect species attacks. In both cases, there could be thousands of different product recommendations or formulations that could be utilized to address those issues. To quickly pull the right info, agronomists can either type in a prompt or use voice commands to ask a question and get a response from Oz. While Anderson declined to share a time horizon for how long the pilot phase would last, she said that Land O'Lakes is keeping an especially close eye on hallucinations. The co-op has a dedicated group of senior agronomists, from all across the U.S., who are able to pressure test the regionally relevant responses and ensure the outputs are valid. "Oz has to give accurate recommendations every time," says Anderson. "The second Oz starts hallucinating or spitting out a bad recommendation is when we'll lose any excitement or willingness to adopt and it'll erode trust." And while the name for Oz may evoke the rural Kansas farm that Dorothy called home in "The Wizard of Oz," the development team was actually inspired by the abbreviation for ounce, which is oz. "When you're making decisions about how to mix products or how much water goes with them, you're worrying a lot about ounces and not screwing that up," says Anderson. News packets. Adoption curve.

That's why Full Circle Ag is proud to partner with Land O'Lakes to contribute funding toward the Sargent Central track project - an investment that will benefit local students, athletes, and the entire community for years to come.