N.C A&T Co-Leads Convergence Accelerator summit for Digital and Precision Agriculture

Growing enough food for an ever-increasing world population on the same amount of land will be one of the future’s most daunting tasks. But it’s a mission that agriculture professionals can become equipped to handle by working together to solve problems centering around food, energy and water security, according to the National Science Foundation.

Junior Morgan Campbell takes light measurements on soybeans at the University Farm.

To “accelerate” that collaboration process, N.C. A&T joined Iowa State and Penn State recently to host a summit of agriculture professionals, scientists, professors, government and non-profit leaders, and industry partners. The Convergence Accelerator workshop, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, brought together nearly 200 participants from across the nation to re-imagine what agriculture’s future could become using digital tools to make agriculture more efficient and precise. 

“There is a large deficit between the amount of food we produce today and the amount it will take to feed the world in 2050,” said Gregory Goins, Ph.D., chair of the Natural Resources and Environmental Design department and one of the hosts of the virtual meeting. “NSF knows that solving problems of such a magnitude will take input from all disciplines, not just the agricultural or governmental ones. We can’t tax our way out of the problem. These sessions allowed experts from a variety of fields to all come together, discuss, and then report possible solutions.”

The four-day “brainstorm” included representatives from industry, agricultural practice and research, government officials and other stakeholders, and featured sessions on such topics as the tools and materials needed to develop precision agriculture; identifying types of data and their usefulness; and developing sustainable delivery systems. Each session included discussions of both the issues at hand and possible solutions.

The sessions will result in a cumulative report for the NSF to make widely available throughout the industry, allowing industry, research and other partners to make proposals for further work on various parts of the problem, funded by the foundation.

Researchers, teachers and Extension leaders from across the CAES participated in the sessions, led by Goins and co-leaders from Iowa State and Penn State.

“The nation has emerged from the pandemic into a very different economy than the one we had a year ago,” said Goins, who is a former program officer for NSF. “The pandemic exposed the need for the agricultural sector to operate more efficiently and better sustain environmental quality – and to be more resilient in general. As a result, there is a renewed interest for cutting-edge technologies. We need to innovate very rapidly, and investments in digital and precision agriculture allow us to meet the challenges of making a profit, making more food and sustaining the environment.”

Limits of the current system of government-subsidized, non-local production were quickly exposed during the pandemic, Goins said.

“Transportation, the supply chain, very quickly fell apart during the pandemic, leading to shortages of certain foods and goods, and causing an element of panic among consumers,” Goins said. “Investments in digital agriculture give farmers the opportunities to advance the way they produce to overcome those deficiencies.”

Making agriculture more precise involves the use of technology to target specifically, reducing waste and saving money for the farmer in the process. For example, farmers may currently use a long pole to attach to the back of their tractor to spray crops.

“Like turning on a shower, you just spray everything,” Goins said. “Some of the spray may land on the plant, some may go into the soil, some might go into the water. Digital technology would include cameras that can look right at the plant and know the difference between it and a weed, simply by the shape, so that each individual weed gets sprayed, versus the whole field. Farmers save on pesticide costs, reduce waste. Consumers benefit from having less chemicals on their food. The environment benefits from less contamination in the soil and water.”

Ideas for advances may come from all facets of the industry, or even outside of it, Goins said.

“A guy in a little lab in Moscow, Idaho may have a neat device that he really built for Tesla, but it could also steer a tractor so that a farmer wouldn’t even have to,” he said. “The technologies won’t all be from agriculture.”

At the same time, Goins cautions, the report will highlight opportunities to resolve some of the science and technology gaps that currently plague the industry.

“Not everyone has the same access to technology,” Goins said. “Rural counties in North Carolina don’t always have good broadband internet, but those are where the farms are. So how to ensure the vitality of rural communities, and avoid having the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ when it comes to this technology, is one of our chief problems.”

As the report becomes generally available, funding proposals will lead to scientific discoveries that can fill those technical gaps, Goins said.

“I am so happy that, given our mission to address the needs of socially disadvantaged producers, faculty from across the CAES were represented and that A&T was a leader of the workshop,” Goins said. “As an HBCU, we serve a different niche in agriculture. It’s beautiful that the smallholder, the non-corporate farm is at the table.”