ARDEN HILLS, MN- Land O'Lakes, Inc. has named Honors College student Erica Timmons and Purdue student Margaret Hegwood to its 2016-17 Emerging Leaders for Food Security fellowship. They will join the cooperative's efforts to find sustainable, practical and achievable solutions to world hunger.

The 11 leaders hail from six universities and come from both city and rural backgrounds. As participants in the third year of the Global Food Challenge Emerging Leaders for Food Security Program, Timmons and Hegwood will be partnered with university professors and mentors from Land O'Lakes, Inc. to develop plans to fight global hunger. Throughout the academic year, they will develop a project related to food insecurity and engage their campus peers about that topic through social media. They will also take part in a summer internship at key Land O'Lakes, Inc. locations, talk with smallholder farmers in Africa and visit with policymakers and agriculture experts in Washington D.C.

" By empowering students with tools to address food insecurity, Land O'Lakes is creating leaders who can influence its industry to feed a growing population with sustainability in mind," Timmons said.

READ MORE about Timmons and the program.