about

Translating science into actionable management is a major bottleneck hindering agricultural technology adoption. Despite the rapid advance of new technologies for agriculture, adoption and implementation is still a major roadblock. In addition to this, the insufficient knowledge-transfer from developers and scientists to end-users (e.g. farmers, agribusiness, and extension) is limiting progress in the digital agriculture arena. 

However, the main disconnections are not only on the side of knowledge-transfer and actionable management, but from the lack of integration of relevant public-private efforts to test new technologies. 

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Therefore, this project will establish for the first-time an experimental prototype farm of tomorrow (EPFOT) with the objective of testing new technologies with a focus divided in three sections of the Digital Agriculture: 

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• Robots and machinery for increasing crop productivity and input efficiency, 

• Imaging for estimation of crop growth, development, and yield, and 

• Sensors for monitoring plant, soil, and environmental health.

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This project will require the implementation of a transdisciplinary approach (although not included as co-PIs); the team has considerable connections with agronomists, statisticians, economists, computer scientists, and practitioners to lower barriers that isolate research disciplines (“silos”) and co-elaborate projects to develop innovative initiatives.

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This co-production of knowledge will promote a digital space of work for many farming inputs, train new generations of ‘thinkers’ at the university-scale, prepare the new workforce for the future of our state, and develop a roadmap for leading our efforts in research, teaching, and extension on the Digital Agriculture discipline. By demonstrating this concept, the team will generate this unique digital farm that will allow us to explore more innovative ideas, broaden research collaborations across disciplines and set the foundation to target large size grants in the near future including NASA, NSF and USDA, as well as industry.