Higher Education Farming with Technology

Colleges and universities are using new technology to train the next crop of ag workers

By Andrew Weeks

VERMILLION, S.D. • When he drives along Interstate 29 in South Dakota, KC Santosh views the expansive fields of corn and, like clockwork, his mind turns to the future of agriculture.

That future has him a bit concerned. As the newer crop of ag producers moves away from the family homestead in search of better opportunities elsewhere, Santosh wonders how the life expectancy of the regional farm operation can be extended.

He’s found one answer: artificial intelligence.

Santosh, chair and associate professor of the Department of Computer Science at the University of South Dakota, has been instrumental in developing an AI program at the school, which he says will start next fall and will benefit not only ag students but those in other programs.

“If we have that much space to grow,” he said, referring to the expansive open lands of the region, “and that much space in which to produce, then we should think a little bit smarter” about managing agriculture.

Smarter is using new technology, he said, including artificial intelligence.

“With AI-driven tools, we aim to improve users’ experience,” he said. “That ultimately brings sustainable solutions for a variety of applications, such as health sciences, biology, and risk management. With thorough data analysis, AI-driven tools help predict, visualize, and decide.”

The program aims to educate young ag producers on the tools they need to make farming a viable industry now and in the future; it also is to entice local talent to stay home instead of moving to other regions and states.

“We haven’t changed that much, and so our citizens are moving away, meaning we should be technology-driven so they come back,” he said.

Santosh has been at the university since 2015. When he approached the university about developing the AI program, the school could have said no. If that were the case, things would remain as they have been. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but nothing would have changed for the better.

With AI, a lot will change. It will benefit students by allowing them to better capture and analyze data, including comparisons to historical values; improve processes; and provide more ways for them to be efficient farmers, among a host of other benefits.

Drones and other autonomous tools will play a part in the program.

“Sending drones, having different sensing devices like crop monitoring, is one of the important things,” he said, noting that students will use AI to better capture and analyze data so they know where the best place on a farm is to plant and harvest; it will detect drylands and take soil temperature and other readings.

He said regional farmers who adopt AI will better ensure their farm has a longer life expectancy. Having the rising generation of local ag producers learn these new technologies in school will be a boon to the industry.

It’s not too late for the school or farmers to start using AI, Santosh said, but time is of the essence because of advancing technology and the current challenges facing the ag industry. Adopting AI will help them to make better decisions about the future of their farm and, in return, allow them to make more money off their product.

Santosh said today’s need is “sustainable agriculture,” meaning less effort but more production. “It is important to have a game changer,” he said, “understanding data, understanding the form lines, because different landscapes, different modalities, different models will come up. … These are all considerations that farmers and ranchers have to consider going forward.”

Eventually, the department will work with other departments at the school.

Meghann Jarchow, chair and associate professor of the university’s Department of Sustainability & Environment, said her department will collaborate with the AI program and looks forward to that effort. It will further benefit students in precision agriculture, a topic of study in her department.

Students there look at spatial analysis, another boon for ag workers and environment workers to gauge and measure land space. In the case of the farmer, this allows them to better plot and plan their growing areas.

“The idea of precision agriculture has been around for a bit,” she said, “but now the idea of precision conservation has kind of come with it.”

She said segments of a property may not be profitable for farming, and newer technologies help producers better determine what land might be best for which types of use.

“If it’s a pothole of wetlands that always floods and you chronically lose money on that, for instance, there could be a lot of value, certainly environmentally, for putting in some other use,” she said. “But there are also economic benefits by taking it out of row-crop production.

I think there’s increasing recognition of the importance of that.”

She said her program is working toward training students on drone use and data analytics, similar to what the AI program will do.

“You can get tremendous information about the landscape, about crops, at a level that you just couldn’t in the past,” she said. “Farmers could either get the certification and get the equipment to do it themselves or hire people to do it for them so that they can get a much more detailed look at their crops, or the land they own in general, and then can make decisions on a spatial scale that they couldn’t make in the past. … We’re working on making sure we’re training students on these technologies and data sets and how they can incorporate that into software so they can make sense of it.” continued on page 18

Santosh said the AI program will launch next fall, but this spring the school plans to do outreach to better educate the community about the new program. It also is trying to secure a grant from the national Science Foundation to keep the program running.

Students farther north, at North Dakota State College of Science in Wahpeton, N.D., also are learning various topics of agriculture, including two of those most in demand: agronomy and precision agriculture, said Craig Zimprich, chair of the school’s Department of Agriculture.

Like the University of South Dakota, NDSCS uses new technology, including drones and other data collection tools, to educate students. But a deeper learning comes at the other end of that – data analysis, something that will become even more in demand in the ag industry.

Zimprich, who has been with the school for more than a decade, said about 90 first- and second-year students are enrolled in the school’s ag program.

TANNER HALL, A STUDENT IN THE DEPARTMENT OF SUSTAINABILITY & ENVIRONMENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH DAKOTA, IS SEEN DOING LAB WORK AT THE SCHOOL. IMAGE: COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH DAKOTA