Posts Tagged: Neil McRoberts

Apps for Ag hackathon brings ag and tech together

A gardening and produce-sharing app took top prize in the Apps for Ag hackathon, after contestants pitched judges at the California State Fair in Sacramento on July 17.

The Apps for Ag hackathon, which was spearheaded by Gabe Youtsey, chief information officer, brought software developers, designers, entrepreneurs, farmers and others who work in agriculture to the ANR building for a weekend to create apps to address agricultural issues.

The first place team, GivingGarden, took home $7,500 in prize money, custom rodeo belt buckles and a six-month, top-tier membership to the AgStart Incubator in Woodland.

The hyper-local, produce-sharing app provides gardening advice from the UC Master Gardener Program and enables backyard gardeners to connect with others who want to share their produce. The GivingGarden team members are Scott Kirkland, Josh Livni, Deema Tamimi and John Knoll.

Second place was awarded to Sense and Protect, a mobile task-management app that connects to climate sensors to protect farmworkers' health and enhance their productivity. Sense and Protect team members Dhrubajyoti Das, Alex Avalos, Anthony Johnson and Peter Swanson shared $4,500.

UC IPM's Mark Takata and Chinh Lam split $2,500 for third place for their ACP STAR System, a geo and temporal database and platform for tracking Asian citrus psyllid and other invasive pests.

The top three teams will also receive complimentary startup incorporation services valued at $2,200 from Royse Law.

Compostable, which finished in fourth place, is an app and “Internet of Things” (IoT) device that diverts food waste from landfills and turns it into fertilizer and fuel so that it can be used on a farm. Sohail Khan, Nathan Azevedo, Brandon Jack, Regan King and Raheela Khan make up the Compostable team.

All of the participating teams had about 48 hours to develop their apps. Teams that were interested were offered $500 in “cloud credits” to build their solutions and host them on Amazon Web Services' platform. Teams also had access to an IoT kit to incorporate connected devices into their solution.

The top four teams pitched their apps to judges in front of a live audience at the California State Fair.

The event was sponsored by UC Agriculture and Natural Resources, the California State Fair and the City of Sacramento.

“It's really important for UC ANR to be involved in app development because as farmers and natural resource managers face ever-increasing challenges – climate change, invasive pests, the need to conserve water – technology is one of the ways to find solutions,” said VP Glenda Humiston.

“Using technology we can find better ways to reduce pesticide use, increase irrigation efficiency, reduce travel into the fields, manage people better, and deal with the fact that we have a huge labor shortage in this state,” said Humiston, who served as one of the Apps for Ag judges.

The other judges included University of California Chief Information Officer Tom Andriola, USDA Chief Data Officer Bobby Jones, and Better Food Ventures and Mixing Bowl Hub founder Rob Trice.

Join the Extension 3.0 webchat on Sept. 12

Mark Lubell, professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at UC Davis, will host a web chat to discuss social network analysis from 10 a.m. to noon on Sept. 12. Please register for “Extension 3.0: Agricultural Outreach & Education in the Age of Connectivity” at http://ucce.ucdavis.edu/survey/survey.cfm?surveynumber=11163.

Lubell will cover

• 21st century agricultural knowledge networks
• Social relationships—participation, belief change, and practice
• Accelerating knowledge networks with information technology and social media
• Illustrating importance of boundary-spanning social networks in sustainable viticulture
• Cooperative Extension—Leveraging knowledge networks for sustainable food systems

The webinar will be on AdobeConnect and a ReadyTalk line will be set up for audio. Links will be emailed to registrants. On Twitter, follow #SustAgUC.

The sustainability webinar series is sponsored by the UC ANR Sustainable Food Systems Initiative, UC ANR Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education Program and Agricultural Sustainability Institute at UC Davis.

Tom Tomich, professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at UC Davis, W.K. Kellogg Endowed Chair in Sustainable Food Systems and director ASI and SAREP, kicked off the series with sustainability science. Neil McRoberts, assistant professor in the Department of Plant Pathology at UC Davis, discussed “Sustainability: Linking Theory to Practice.” Ermias Kebreab, professor in the Department of Animal Science at UC Davis and Sesnon Endowed Chair in Sustainable Agriculture, discussed "Environmental Sustainability of Animal Agriculture."

If you missed any of these webinars, recordings can be viewed at http://ucanr.edu/sites/StrategicInitiatives/Sustainable_Food_Systems/Outreach_814.

 

Sustainability webinars on May 31, June 13

Neil McRoberts, assistant professor in the Department of Plant Pathology at UC Davis, will present the webinar “Sustainability: Linking Theory to Practice” from 10 a.m. to noon on May 31. 

McRoberts will discuss

• Using formal models for strategic planning of extension and outreach efforts
• Cross-linking of interdisciplinary scientists
• Sustainability theory Web resources

Online registration for the free webinar is required at http://ucce.ucdavis.edu/survey/survey.cfm?surveynumber=10668.

On June 13, Ermias Kebreab, professor in the Department of Animal Science at UC Davis and Sesnon Endowed Chair in Sustainable Agriculture, will discuss "Environmental Sustainability of Animal Agriculture." The Kebreab webinar will also run from 10 a.m. to noon.

Kebreab will discuss

• Sustainability as a “wicked problem”
• Water quality and livestock production
• Mitigation of air emissions from livestock operation

Register for Kebreab’s free webinar at http://ucce.ucdavis.edu/survey/survey.cfm?surveynumber=10669.

The webinar series is sponsored by the UC ANR Sustainable Food Systems Initiative, UC ANR Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education Program, and Agricultural Sustainability Institute at UC Davis.

Tom Tomich, professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at UC Davis, W.K. Kellogg Endowed Chair in Sustainable Food Systems and director ASI and SAREP, kicked off the series with sustainability science. If you missed Tomich’s webinar, a recording can be viewed at http://asi.ucdavis.edu/newsroom/blog/preview-video-for-the-upcoming-webinar-is-there-a-sustainability-science.

 

Beef cattle in Siskiyou County. Ermias Kebreab will discuss "Environmental Sustainability of Animal Agriculture."

Read more