Land O'Lakes

Land O'Lakes advances resilient US farm productivity with AI-powered digital assistant

Land O'Lakes · Agronomic advisory · Microsoft

Land O'Lakes, a leading US agricultural cooperative, expanded its partnership with Microsoft to launch Oz, an AI-powered digital assistant built on Azure AI Foundry. Oz gives retail agronomists instant access to two decades of proprietary crop data, supporting rapid, informed decisions for cost-effective farming interventions. The alliance aims to relieve economic pressure on US farms facing rising input costs, margin squeezes, and climate-related challenges. The collaboration represents a broader modernization initiative, with the majority of Land O'Lakes' IT migrated to Azure Cloud and Copilot tools tailored to farm management. Additional digital platforms, like Digital Ag and Digital Dairy, enable farmers to track soil health, optimize herds, and align outputs with consumer demand. Oz is being positioned as a precision tool for agronomists and demonstrates how AI and cloud can advance food security, climate-resilient farming, and operational efficiencies in agriculture.

AgenticProduction

Bayer enhances crop monitoring and disease detection for farmers worldwide

Bayer · Crop yield prediction · Microsoft

Bayer's Crop Science division leverages Microsoft Azure Data Manager for Agriculture to unify and analyze agronomic data from more than 220 million acres of farmland globally. Through its Climate FieldView platform, Bayer ingests weather, satellite, sensor, and equipment data, delivering AI-powered insights for disease detection, yield assessment, and optimized intervention. The collaboration unlocks real-time data access and analytics for farmers, agronomists, and insurers, boosting productivity and sustainability. A conversational copilot chat interface allows users to query complex data in natural language, accelerating threat response and digital enablement. Azure Data Manager's connectors facilitate integration with third-party equipment and external data sources, expediting innovation. The ongoing partnership aims for fully digitized Crop Science sales by 2030, with significant progress in outcomes-based, data-driven agriculture and connected ecosystem value for customers worldwide.

Agentic

Land O'Lakes elevates farmer profitability and sustainability through data-driven agriculture

Land O'Lakes · Crop disease detection · Microsoft

Land O'Lakes, a leading American farmer-owned cooperative, partnered with Microsoft for a multi-year strategic alliance to transform agriculture through advanced technologies. Farmers in the cooperative face unpredictable weather, trade disruptions, climate change, and market pressures, all contributing to financial instability and reduced productivity. Land O'Lakes leveraged Microsoft Azure, AI, and machine learning to turn decades of manually gathered data into actionable intelligence for farmers across more than 300,000 member producers. Through digital agritech solutions powered by Azure, the cooperative delivers hyper-local, field-specific recommendations on crop planting, nutrient optimization, and disease detection. The alliance prioritizes sustainability by enabling more targeted and environmentally sound fertilization, while also supporting crop diversity and reducing waste. AI and machine learning algorithms move decision-making from intuition to optimized, data-driven field management, helping even small farms transition from operating at a loss to financial viability. The joint effort expands rural broadband access, supporting digital transformation for remote and smaller farms and innovating the food supply chain. This project exemplifies the role of cloud-based AI in modernizing agriculture, improving productivity, and fostering sustainable practices for U.S. farmers.

Land O'Lakes and Asahi drive digital transformation in agriculture operations

Land O'Lakes · Agriculture optimization · Microsoft

Azure Data Manager for Agriculture enables agricultural organizations to unify data from diverse sources (drones, sensors, weather, equipment) into a single platform. Customers like Land O'Lakes have used the solution to eliminate dependence on frequent farm visits, increasing their digital reach and monitoring capability. The platform leverages Microsoft Copilot templates for natural language querying across the farm's aggregated data. Security and compliance are central, with Azure's extensive cybersecurity infrastructure backing the solution. Through the use of actionable AI insights, Asahi partners with Tenso AI to apply prescriptive modeling for crop quality and yield management. The platform supports scalable insights for over 100,000 premium subscribers, providing operational efficiencies and sustainability gains. Bayer partners strategically to bring agricultural datasets, models, and workflows into the platform, enhancing solution effectiveness.

Scaled Production