Posts Tagged: Apps
Apps for Ag Hackathon winner uses artificial intelligence to diagnose plant problems
For 48 hours, innovators and entrepreneurs at the Apps for Ag Hackathon labored over laptops at The Urban Hive in Sacramento before pitching their ideas to judges at the California State Fair. More than 40 people, some from as far as New York and Texas, competed for a $10,000 grand prize and assistance from UC Agriculture and Natural Resources to turn their ideas into commercial enterprises.
Ultimately Dr. Green, a mobile app to diagnose plant problems, took the top prize on Sunday (July 30). The second-place Greener app also helps people diagnose and treat plant diseases. Farm Table, an app that promotes agritourism, came in third place.
One goal of the hackathon was to produce solutions for military veterans who are becoming farmers. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs was a major sponsor of the event and leaders from Washington D.C. were on site all weekend participating.
“There was an amazing range of applications this year,” said Gabriel Youtsey, chief innovation officer for University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, which hosted the hackathon.
Twelve teams pitched new ways to apply technology to improve the food system.
“There was an application to take a picture of a plant and it'll identify the plant disease – which can help anyone from backyard gardeners to professional growers – all the way to an application for community-supported fisheries, which helps fishermen better scale their businesses and allows for customers to get the freshest fish,” Youtsey said.
There was an app to match unemployed veterans with farm jobs, an online resource for bees, an app to simplify shipping logistics, an app for detecting mold on produce and many more solutions for food-related problems.
1st Place: Dr. Green
Figuring out why a plant is ailing can be time-consuming for a new farmer or backyard gardener. The plant doctor is always in with Dr. Green. The app created by Sreejumon Kundilepurayil and Vidya Kannoly of Pleasanton will help people identify crop diseases quickly through artificial intelligence and machine learning. The app can incorporate data from sensors monitoring temperature, light and soil moisture to alert growers to problems. Using a smart phone, backyard gardeners and growers can take a photo of plant symptoms and get a diagnosis or use the messaging feature to ask a question about symptoms and receive advice immediately.
Kundilepurayil and Kannoly won $10,000 and tickets to the UC Davis Food and Ag Entrepreneurship Academy, $3,000 worth of Google Cloud Platform credits, plus other resources to help the team start their venture.
2nd Place: Greener
Using a smart phone, home gardeners can take a photo of plant symptoms and quickly get a diagnosis and recommended IPM treatment from the Greener app, created by Scott Kirkland, John Knoll and Shiang-Wan Chin of Davis and Calvin Doval of Oakland. They won $5,000 and $1,000 worth of Google Cloud Platform credits and other resources to help start their venture.
3rd Place: The Farm Table
The Farm Table app aims to make farms more economically sustainable and educate the public about food through agritourism. Heather Lee of San Francisco teamed up with Will Mitchell of Sacramento and Zhenting Zhou of New York City to create the agritourism app.
“We are making agritourism accessible to farmers by building a platform that's connecting visitors with farms,” said Lee. “This is going to help educate our communities on where their food comes from and create an additional revenue source for farmers.”
They won $2,500 and $1,000 worth of Google Cloud Platform credits and other resources to help start their venture.
Growing the pipeline of young innovators
Judges included Joshua Tuscher of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs; Robert Trice, investor and founder of The Mixing Bowl Hub; Jenna Rodriguez, product manager at Ceres Imaging; Ann Dunkin, chief information officer for the County of Santa Clara; and Jessica Smith, vice president of Strategic Partnerships at AngelHack.
Apps for Ag is a food and agriculture innovation event series hosted by University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources (UCANR) and sponsored by IO Labs, The Urban Hive, California Community Colleges and the California State Fair.
“We're growing the pipeline of young innovators, getting entrepreneurs and technologists interested in applying technology to solving problems in the food system,” said Youtsey, who led organization of the hackathon.
“UC ANR is the original innovation engine in food, agriculture and natural resources in California and has been so for over 100 years. This is just taking another spin at tackling innovation in food and agriculture through an innovative competition style format with technology,” he said.
Additional support for the hackathon was provided by Valley Vision, The Mixing Bowl, Farmer Veteran Coalition, AngelHack, Nutiva, Google Cloud Platform, Royse Law Firm, Hot Italian, GTS Kombucha, Startup Sac, AgStart, StartupGrind Sacramento, Future Food, Internet Society San Francisco Bay Chapter, Sacramento Food Co-op, Balsamiq and YouNoodle.
Apps for Ag Hackathon invites tech ideas to improve the food system
Winners receive $10,000 for first place, $5,000 for second place and $2,500 for third place
Food and agriculture innovators, farmers and entrepreneurs are invited to compete for $10,000 and other prizes at the 2017 Apps for Ag Hackathon July 28-30. Contestants will gather at The Urban Hive in Sacramento to create new ways to apply technology to improve the food system.
At the hackathon, anyone with an idea for technology that would simplify a task for farmers or consumers can team up with people who can turn the idea into something functional. It can be a mobile app, device or a machine.
“Apps for Ag is not just about technology and agriculture, it's about bringing together uncommon collaborators from all kinds of backgrounds and organizations to solve problems and create innovation that transform our food supply and the system behind it,” said Gabriel Youtsey, chief information officer for University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, which is hosting the hackathon.
“We're incredibly excited to be working with The Urban Hive to host the event and to collaborate with those in the burgeoning tech and innovation scene in the Sacramento area,” said Youtsey. “Food and agriculture are natural focus areas for innovators and entrepreneurs in our region and we hope to help foster more of that growth.”
To inspire the innovators as they develop their food and agriculture ideas and technology, a few speakers will kick off the hackathon with their perspectives.
Last year's Apps for Ag winner Deema Tamimi, CEO and founder of Giving Garden, will talk about challenges facing the food system. A veteran farmer will discuss the hurdles farmers face today and the potential for technology to meet their needs. Joyce Hunter, former deputy CIO at the USDA will give a brief talk about the power of open data and how it can be used to solve some of our greatest agricultural and food challenges.
Following opening remarks, participants will present their ideas, form teams and begin to build their software applications and pitch decks over the next two days. Expert mentors will assist the teams and food will be provided throughout the event. On Sunday, July 30, at 4 p.m. the teams will present their apps to a panel of judges at the California State Fair. Members of the public are welcome to attend.
Judges include Joshua Tuscher of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs; Robert Trice, investor and founder of The Mixing Bowl Hub; Jenna Rodriguez Product Manager at Ceres Imaging, Ann Dunkin, CIO of County of Santa Clara, California; Nicole Rogers, director of marketing and communications for Nugget Market; and Jessica Smith, vice president of Strategic Partnerships at AngelHack.
The three top teams will be awarded cash prizes and resources to help turn their technology into a business. The winning team will receive $10,000, second place gets $5,000 and third place gets $2,500.
The Apps for Ag Hackathon will be held at The Urban Hive in Sacramento. Register for free at http://www.apps-for-ag.com.
To learn more about the hackathon, visit http://apps-for-ag.com/hackathon or email questions to info@apps-for-ag.com.
Apps for Ag is a food and agriculture innovation event series hosted by University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources (UCANR) and sponsored by IO Labs, The Urban Hive, California Community Colleges and the California State Fair.
Support for the hackathon is also provided by Sacramento and Davis community businesses and organizations: Valley Vision, The Mixing Bowl, Farmer Veteran Coalition, AngelHack, Nutiva, Google Cloud Platform, Royse Law Firm, Hot Italian, GTS Kombucha, Startup Sac, AgStart, StartupGrind Sacramento, Future Food, Internet Society San Francisco Bay Chapter, Sacramento Food Co-op, Balsamiq and YouNoodle.
The Apps for Ag series will soon become a part of The Verde Innovation Network for Entrepreneurship (The VINE), UC ANR's statewide initiative and network for food and agriculture innovators, researchers, investors and agencies slated to launch in late 2017.
Strawberry and vegetable crops extension program and its impact in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara Counties
Extension education plays a major role in agricultural development. Timely and efficient dissemination of information on new technologies, crop production or pest management practices, and emerging or potential problems helps growers to reduce their production costs and improve yields. A variety of communication tools and techniques are necessary to effectively carry out the mission of extension education. As communication is a major part of extension education, the kind of communication tools used will determine the success of the program. Modern communication tools such as emails, webinars, electronic journals, social media, web portals, videos, and smartphone applications add value to traditional outreach methods such as field visits, phone calls, extension meetings, and field days. While the number of subscribers, views to online articles, or attendees at meetings indicates the effectiveness of the extension program, periodic surveys are very important to measure the impact.
Here is an overview of my extension program and some of the methods used to reach out to my clientele groups since I joined UC Cooperative Extension in January, 2009.
Field visits or individual consultations: They provide an opportunity to understand individual needs and provide specific solutions. More than 6,300 people have been served through personal visits or communication related to various crop production and crop protection.
Field days and extension meetings: My annual extension events provide an excellent opportunity to bring together local communities where new information is exchanged and collaborations are developed. I have reached out to more than 5,800 people through various extension events organized by myself, my colleagues, or industry partners. Presentations and handouts from my meetings can be accessed online.
Trade journals and web portals: Several print magazines and web portals such as American Vegetable Grower, American Fruit Grower, CAPCA Adviser, Growing Produce, Vegetables West, and Western Farm Press are excellent resources to disseminate information to thousands of readers. I regularly contribute article to these sources.
Newsletters: Sending out periodical information through newsletters keeps the clients informed about new developments. Central Coast Agriculture Highlights is a quarterly newsletter that I sent out to about 500 subscribers. After finding out that other online articles are more effective in timely dissemination of information, I focused more on those options. However, I continue to contribute articles to county newsletters.
Electronic journals: I started the electronic journal Strawberries and Vegetables six years ago (15 December, 2010), to alert growers about an issue that some of the strawberry growers were experiencing. Most of these articles are reviewed by peers and their periodic publication allowed immediate availability of information to people within the region as well as those outside California or United States. I started another electronic journal Pest News in January, 2011, to provide information about pests, diseases, and other issues not related to strawberries and vegetables.
Out of the 80 articles in Strawberries and Vegetables, I authored or co-authored 74. These articles have a total of 173,120 direct views between 15 December, 2010 and 2016. While my 74 articles had 168,469 views, the remaining six had 4,651. On an average, each of my articles was read more than 2,200 times.
Readership of Strawberries and Vegetables eJournal related to specific crops or general issues from 15 December 2010-2016. Numbers on the bars are the number of articles.
Number of articles (on bars) on different topics and their readership from 15 December, 201-2016 (above). Top five articles with the highest number of views (below).
The average views for articles on strawberry or vegetable issues was about the same, but when the views or the readership of individual articles was considered, spider mite management in strawberries was the most popular topic followed by information on the invasive Bagrada bug.
In Pest News the 16 articles I authored or co-authored were viewed 52,743 times since 2 February, 2011 while the 15 article authored by others were viewed 15, 264 times. Articles about the spotted lanternfly the weeping fig thrips, both invasive species, had the highest views.
Top five popular articles in Pest News eJournal.
Other extension publications: The illustrated strawberry production manual published in collaboration with Cachuma Resource Conservation District in both English and Spanish is available for free download. This publication complements contributions made to pest management guidelines or manuals published by UCANR.
Smartphone application: Apps have become very popular because of the convenience and a variety of features or services they offer. I conceived the idea of developing IPMinfo app three years ago to provide information about pests and diseases and had an Android version developed first for initial testing. An iOS version was first released in May, 2015 and with some improvements, the Android version was released in September, 2016. IPMinfo currently has information about strawberry pests and diseases, but additional crops will be added. With a few hundred downloads and very positive feedback from several users, IPMinfo, the first such app from University of California is an efficient extension tool using modern technology.
IPMinfo can be downloaded through Apple App Store and Google Play Store for free.
Twitter:Tweets are a great way to announce publications, extension events, or important issues in 140 characters or less. I started @calstrawberries and @calveggies accounts in January, 2010, which now have 210, and 149 followers, respectively. In addition to the followers, tweets from these accounts reach out to hundreds of other Twitter users.
Stay tuned to the updates by following @calstrawberries and @calveggies.
Facebook: Not having the character limit as in Twitter, Facebook allows us to post pictures and large text to engage clients in conversation about research and extension activities. I created the @strawberriesvegetables page in June, 2012 and it reaches out to those who are not connected through other tools.
Like the @strawberriesvegetables Facebook page and stay connected.
YouTube videos: A picture is worth a thousand words and a video is worth much more. Short videos are very valuable in providing information or training on a variety of issues. I first posted a YouTube video on the biology, damage, and control of the Bagrada bug on 1 August, 2013 in response to numerous queries about this invasive pest. On 23 September, 2013, I posted my second video on virus decline (Pallidosis-related decline) of strawberry. Both videos helped in providing a good overview of important issues at that time. Additional videos are also available on my YouTube channel.
Informative short videos on pest and disease issues can be found on my YouTube channel.
While there are several communication tools for extending information, it is important to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of each and use them as appropriate for the program and the specific clientele groups.
Needs assessment and impact measurement: Assessing the needs of the clients helps build a research and extension program that addresses existing and emerging issues. Conducting surveys immediately and a few months after the extension events helps understand their usefulness and impact in improving clients' knowledge, change behavior, or improving their agricultural practices. Surveys conducted after my extension events have been receiving positive feedback. For example, a recent survey showed that the information I provided through my research and extension program during last year positively impacted farming on more than 137,000 acres and improved savings or returns that amounted to $1.28 million.
Feedback received from more than 300 people since 1 September, 2015 indicated that 99.4% found the articles in my electronic journals useful and 93.4% would use that information in their farming operations.
Highly positive feedback indicates the usefulness of the information provided through the two eJournals.
Acknowledgements: Thanks to all the growers, PCAs, industry partners, and other clients who support my research and extension program and continue to provide feedback enabling me to improve and serve better.
http://ucanr.edu/articlefeedback
Citizen scientists can help track wild pigs with new UC mobile app
Whether you call them wild hogs, feral pigs, feral hogs, wild boars, Russian boars or Eurasian boars, by any name the hairy beasts are wrecking crews on California lands. In rangelands, forests and farms, wild pigs trample crops, prey on farm animals and rip up soil with their sharp tusks, contributing to erosion.
“Rangeland managers and farmers can enter data into the app from the field so that we can estimate the land area and economic impacts of feral pig damage over a longer time period,” said Roger Baldwin, UC Cooperative Extension wildlife specialist in the Department of Wildlife, Fish, and Conservation Biology at UC Davis.
Here's how it works. To file a report, users take photos of the wild pig damage, describe the damage and note the number of pigs seen. The app will map the acreage and geographic location. Cell service is not required at the site to collect data.
When the user is connected to wi-fi or cell service, the data and photos will be uploaded to the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources server so Baldwin and John Harper, UC Cooperative Extension livestock and natural resources advisor, can analyze the data. Users will be able to see a map of wild pig damage, but to maintain user privacy, private property and user identities are blocked from the general public.
"The goal of the app is to demarcate wild pig damage, ultimately allowing us to relate this data to habitat features present at damage sites to determine the impact that these habitat components have, both on how pigs use the landscape and where damage is most likely to occur,” Baldwin said.
“The app, especially from a rangeland standpoint, will provide a large data set that will help us calculate acreage damaged,” said Harper, who is based in Mendocino and Lake counties. “Once that is available, we have tools, presently used for fire loss, that will allow us to calculate economic loss of forage due to the pigs. The end user would benefit in knowing that loss and policymakers would benefit from knowing the aggregate economic loss from a managed game animal.”
Wild pig populations and their associated damage are so widespread throughout California that statewide eradication efforts may not be possible, according to Baldwin.
“We probably need to focus our limited resources on managing wild pigs in targeted areas that will provide the greatest benefit,” he said. “Information collected from this app will hopefully allow us to identify these areas, ultimately resulting in more effective and practical management of wild pigs in both agricultural and natural resource landscapes."
The wild pig damage app can be downloaded for free from the App Store and Google Play. Development of the app was funded by the Renewable Resources Extension Act, a program of USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
Although the study is currently focused on California, the app could be adapted to work at a regional, national or international scale. Citizen scientists can also use the app to report wild pig damage they see around the state.
To participate in the wild pig damage project without the app, landowners and ranchers can fill out a short survey at http://ucanr.edu/wildpig2016.
The survey takes about 15 minutes to complete. Individual identities and survey responses will be kept confidential and participation in the survey is entirely voluntary.
World hunger is not due to a lack of food
There is 20 percent more food available than needed to feed the whole world, reported Rachel Cernansky on FastCoexist.com. The USDA blames a data gap for the fact that some people go hungry.
Gabriel Youtsey, chief information officer for UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR), also believes that if more data was available, consumer-facing apps, in addition to those that help farmers, researchers, industry, or government, would find it useful.
"[They] are interested in more ‘soil to shelf' transparency about how food is grown and produced and how sustainable it is," Youtsey said.
In recent years, app stores have provided an abundance of programs to connect food with people and farmers with information. One such app is "Giving Garden," which in July won the UC ANR "Apps for Ag Hackathon," held in conjunction with the California State Fair.
The hyper-local, produce-sharing app provides gardening advice from the UC Master Gardener Program and helps backyard gardeners connect with others who want to share their produce.
Giving Garden CEO Deema Tamimi said open regional-level data from USDA has been a helpful start, but the agency does not have data on specific microclimates.
"We've seen that there's a lot of people with plant species databases, but they have it under some type of license so you can't just scrape that data and use it," she said. "There's stuff out there, but it's about finding a good data set that's available, and that has no proprietary restriction on top of it."
To advance the open-data cause in agriculture, Youtsey said more public-private partnerships are needed that will help spur innovation and lead to local projects that can have more visible impacts.
"USDA data on data.gov is an excellent resource for apps, and it will be made all the richer once proprietary data stores are further opened up," he said. "It's hard for many to see the benefits of open data until hyper-local success stories start to emerge."