Jane Edwards
Microsoft and the Agriculture Department have selected seven winners of a competition for the development of online applications that aim to help improve the U.S. food system’s resiliency to climate change.
The USDA-Microsoft Innovation Challenge required participants to design new tools that work to analyze the agency’s open data on food production available on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, USDA said Wednesday.
The online apps will work to help farmers and other food producers assess agricultural factors and assist them in their decision-making processes.
“For more than 100 years, USDA has compiled data on the farm economy, production, and the health of crops around the country, and it is exciting to see such modern, useful tools spring from these information sources,” said USDAÂ Secretary Tom Vilsack.
The department launched the contest in July 2015 as part of the President’s Climate Data Initiative and awarded $63,000 in total prizes to winners.
George Lee of San Francisco received the grand prize and the Open Source Application Award for his Farm Plenty online app that works to help farmers decide on their crop choices.
Click here to view the full list of winners.
