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Ag tech focus of free DIGICROP online conference March 28-30
DIGICROP 2022 is organized by the German Cluster of Excellence “PhenoRob – Robotics and Phenotyping for Sustainable Crop Production” at the University of Bonn and the AI Institute for Next Generation Food Systems. It brings together researchers across disciplines who develop, propose, use or evaluate new digital technologies to enhance the sustainability of crop production, crop breeding, biodiversity and ecosystems. The goal of the event is to foster a robust international and interdisciplinary dialogue in these topic areas.
Although scientists and researchers will be delivering fairly technical presentations, the conference is open to the public, said Hanna Bartram, education and public engagement coordinator for the AI Institute for Next Generation Food Systems. The institute is supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture, as part of a larger initiative led by the U.S. National Science Foundation.
Participants can view all of the talks ahead of time and explore the program for the live event at https://digicrop.de/program.
“All of the talks are already on the website. People can watch them now,” said Andy Lyons, program coordinator for Informatics and GIS at University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, a partner of the AI Institute for Next Generation Food Systems. “The live event March 28-30 will be devoted to Q&A with the presenters.”
Examples of presentations include:
- Keynote speaker Stavros Vougioukas, professor of biological and agricultural engineering at UC Davis: Robotic harvesters and harvest-aids: Challenges and opportunities
- Steve Fennimore, UC Cooperative Extension specialist at UC Davis:
Automated Weed Removal Technologies Greatly Improve the Resilience of Vegetable Weed Management Programs - Christine Diepenbrock, assistant professor in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis:
Digital and AI technologies to improve crop nutritional quality and abiotic stress tolerance - Isaya Kisekka, associate professor of agrohydrology and water management in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources and Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering at UC Davis:
Evaluating the effect of Soil Heterogeneity on Root Zone Water Dynamics in Almond Orchards using Electrical Resistivity Tomography - Joshua Viers, professor of water resources management in the School of Engineering at UC Merced:
AI for Ag for the San Joaquin Valley: using inclusive innovation to break the productivity paradox
Registration is open until March 24 and free of charge. To register, visit https://digicrop.de/register.
Join the live event March 28-30 starting at 8 a.m. Pacific time via Zoom. The Zoom links will be made available a few days prior to the conference via the conference area (login required) at https://digicrop.de/conference-area.
For more information, please contact the conference organizers at digicrop2022@phenorob.de. To join the discussion on Twitter, follow #DIGICROP2022 and @ai_nextgenfood.
The AI Institute for Next Generation Food Systems brings together more than 40 researchers from six institutions: UC Davis; UC Berkeley; Cornell University; the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; UC Agriculture and Natural Resources; and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service.
Hackers compete for best ag app
Old coffee cups, laptops streaming code, baggy eyes deprived of sleep: all the usual signs of hackers at work. But a poorly lit hacker hideaway this was not.
The overnight competition, called the Apps for Ag Hackathon, featured farmers, food science students and UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) extension specialists. They teamed up with software developers to craft quick technology solutions that addressed deep challenges in the planet's food systems.
A summit for solutions
The hackathon, in partnership with the World Food Center at the University of California, Davis, was one of a series of events at the Food, Ag and Health Solution Summit, held Dec. 1-3 at UC Davis. Each chapter of the summit brought together uncommon collaborators to partner on a range of possible agtech solutions.
On the first day, the World Food Center's Precision Ag Workshop focused on paving a long-term roadmap with potential industry partners. Ranging from small startups to global corporations and well-established California commodity associations, each organization was investing in front-end irrigation technologies and looking for new opportunities to collaborate with academic researchers.
The pace switched to rapid-fire for a panel at the summit forum on day three: entrepreneurs from eight different agtech startups had seven minutes to pitch their products to the audience. Delving deeper into the world of agtech financing, a later panel discussion asked professional investors what they would look for in startup models.
Hacking through the night
The hackathon ran alongside the forum and other summit events. Participants had only a 32-hour window to fuse together teams, brainstorm a product, develop rough cuts of their software and present their final pitches to the judges.
"People get a little low on sleep, they get a little silly, the creative juices really start flowing," said Apps for Ag organizer Patrick Dosier to Capital Public Radio. "Software developers often have their headphones on and they're in the zone writing code."
With $10,000 in total prize money and a paid trip to Zurich, Switzerland, at stake, the hackers in their final minutes before turning in their presentation slides were actually focusing more on the human network. The conversations evolved away from talk of web hosting software and .png files to meeting for a coffee later and talking about ways to collaborate in the future. While some groups rehearsed their pitches, others exchanged business cards and phone numbers.
From the Central Valley to Silicon Valley
By presentation time at the tail end of the conference, the hackers were visibly exhausted, some carrying pillows and others seen napping in vacant rooms. Thanks to blankets donated by AT&T, many were able to grab quick rests during the hack.
On stage, the Ag for Hire team showed off their app. It connected contract farmworkers to farmers looking to hire. A "LinkedIn for agricultural labor," the app idea took first place at the competition.
"As a worker myself, it's hard to find a job where I can apply my skills," said team member Alejandro Avalos, who has worked on farms since he was 12 years old. "Our app helps a worker find a job based on his skills and actually get a decent wage for it."
Nick Doherty, a UC Davis undergraduate student and recent pick for Apple's 20-Under-20 list, was also on the team.
Along with the $5,000 award, the team will be flown to the Thought for Food Global Summit in Switzerland next year.
Second place and a $3,000 prize went to the team for CropRescue, an app that allows growers to communicate directly with food banks to make excess food donations easier and more efficient. The final $1,500 prize went to the Green Thumb team, which created a task-tracking app to enable better communication among crop advisers, growers and foremen.
UC innovation goes global
Patrick Brown, a UC Davis plant nutrition professor and pomologist at the Agricultural Experiment Station, advised the hackathon teams, as well as taking part in other events. UC ANR small farms advisor Margaret Lloyd also participated in the summit.
Sponsors for the Solution Summit prizes included Intel, UC ANR, the UC Global Food Initiative, UC Innovation Alliances and the Royse Law Firm. The Global Food Initiative also sponsored travel for two doctoral candidates at UC Berkeley and UC Riverside. The Solution Summit was held in partnership with the Innovation Institute for Food and Health, the Mixing Bowl Hub and the SARTA AgStart incubator.
See the Food Hackathon that inspired the competition.
Author: Brad Hooker
