Federal Grant Bolsters Higher Education In AgTech

Growers have indicated the need for highly skilled workforce is becoming more urgent as technology restructures the future of farming.

Today’s blog notes a bright spot amongst many past reports of reduced government-backed financial support in research & development (R&D) and education programs that aim to improve living conditions, reduce environmental impact, and manage the growing population’s resources via technology.

Cornell University has reported that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), through its National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), has endowed the university’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ School of Integrative Plant Science with a $496,000 grant. The federal funding will be used to develop new controlled environment agriculture (CEA) training programs for a skilled workforce that is sorely needed.

Cornell’s associate professor of horticulture Neil Mattson, well-known to us as the keynote speaker at our 2019 HortiCann Light + Tech conference, will collaborate with Cornell Small Farms program director Anu Rangarajan, Ohio State University’s Agricultural Technical Institute, and SUNY Broome Community College to create a technical training certificate in CEA production. The partners also expect to develop a two-year associate’s degree program for students at these institutions and other community colleges to provide solid education in CEA.

Mattson said in the Cornell Chronicle, “Growers consistently state that finding well-trained personnel to operate their facilities is among the largest barriers to expansion.”

Why do we need this educational support? The global population is growing, and supply needs to ramp up to deliver healthy foods to all economic strata. Many food crops are currently unavailable close to home for many, which places a burden on transportation and increases carbon footprint, as well as impacting shelf life. CEA can bring many food-growing resources closer to consumers, especially in urban areas or regions that would prove inhospitable to sensitive crops in a traditional farming operation.

CEA gives growers the means to apply physical systems of growth media, environmental controls, horticultural lighting, and water supply systems along with evidence-backed research in pest management, food safety processes, light customization, and more to produce food sources in a manner designed to balance economic viability, food demand, and sustainability.

Technologies available to modern CEA growers would naturally require a more advanced skillset. Indeed, said Rangarajan, “Our efforts have laid the groundwork for what I hope will be a dynamic training program that will build the workforce and elevate the industry as a whole.”

It’s an exciting time in the horticultural and agricultural space, and learning opportunities abound. Bookmark our HortiCann Light + Tech conference homepage for updates on our upcoming October program, now virtual for 2020. Moving beyond horticultural lighting fundamentals, the program will also delve into agribusiness and the return on investment in advanced systems and controls, AgTech systems integration, and topics related to legalized cannabis growing operations.

Photo credit: Image by iamereri via Pixabay; used under free license for commercial or non-commercial purposes.

Author: Carrie Meadows | LEDsMagazine | Jul 10, 2020

ZOOM - Soil Contaminents and Soil Testing Workshop with Dr Sara Perl Egendorf - Friday, August 28 - 1 PM EST

Sara Perl Egendorf

• Doctoral Student, Groffman Lab, Environmental Sciences Initiative

Sara Perl Egendorf is a Ph.D. student in Earth and Environmental Sciences at the CUNY Graduate Center and Brooklyn College studying urban soil. Her research is focused on human interactions with urban soil contaminants and nutrients on multiple scales,  particularly the potential for urban soil to promote environmental justice and sustainability. She conducted the pilot study for the NYC Mayor’s Office of Environmental Remediation’s Clean Soil Bank for her Masers Thesis at Brooklyn College, and is currently working on research with the NYS Department of Health and Cornell University on sources of lead contamination that are deposited on vegetables in community gardens.

Friday, August 28th - 1:00 - 2:00 PM EST

ZOOM: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/8507742346 (Meeting ID: 850 774 2346)

How Can Crop Production Data Advance The Controlled Environment Agriculture Industry?

The Controlled Environment Agriculture Open Data project aims to advance controlled environment research, machine learning, and artificial intelligence through the collection and dissemination of crop production data.

by By David Kuack

There is a considerable amount of data being generated by both private companies and university researchers when it comes to controlled environment crop production. This data is being generated for ornamentals, food crops, and cannabis. One of the questions about all this data is whether it is being used to its maximum potential to benefit the horticulture industry.

“Data has become a big topic in the horticulture industry with university researchers and private companies,” said Erico Mattos, executive director of the Greenhouse Lighting and Systems Engineering (GLASE) consortium. “People can identify with the challenges and opportunities with the amount of data that is being generated. However, we don’t yet have a centralized repository and a standard methodology for storage to allow us to explore and exploit this data.”

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The formation of the Controlled Environment Agriculture Open Data (CEAOD) project aims to promote crop production data sharing from universities and private companies to accelerate CEA research.

Addressing the data proliferation
In 2018 during the North Central Extension & Research Activity–101 (NCERA-101) meeting members of this USDA-organized committee discussed what should be done with the extensive amount of data being generated by controlled environment researchers. Ohio State University professor Chieri Kubota proposed the formation of a sub-committee to address the need to develop guidelines for sharing data generated by controlled environment agriculture researchers.

“Dr. Kubota initiated the discussion about the need for a centralized platform to store data collected from controlled environment research,” Mattos said. “A task force was formed that included Chieri, Kale Harbick at USDA-ARS, Purdue University professor Yang Yang, Melanie Yelton at Plenty and myself. Since the task force was formed Ken Tran at Koidra and Timothy Shelford at Cornell University have also become members of the task force.

“We started discussing how we could make use of all this data. Researchers in the United States collect a huge amount of data. All of the environmental data such as temperature, relative humidity and carbon dioxide and light levels in controlled environment research is collected. There is also a biological set of data which includes plant biomass and fruit yield.”

Mattos said there is also a great deal of research data generated and collected by private companies that is not shared with the horticulture industry.

“With the advancement in sensors and environmental controls, the capability now exists that this data can be collected,” he said. “With the advancements in computing power, this data can be used to start new applications and new tools that haven’t been available before. However, in order to do this, we have to have access to a large amount of data. That’s why the task force thought it would be good to create a repository where researchers and private companies could share the data following a specific format. This data could then be used in the advancement of machine learning and artificial intelligence applications to optimize crop yields in commercial CEA operations.”

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An increasing number of funding agencies and organizations, including USDA, are requiring researchers include information about their data management plans in their grant proposals.

Need for collecting and organizing data
Mattos said university researchers see the value in creating a centralized database.

“There are probably millions of data points when you consider how many researchers are doing research in the U.S.,” he said. “Historically these researchers have not been required to share their data. However, an increasing number of funding agencies and organizations, including USDA, are requiring that researchers share their data. If researchers apply for a grant from USDA, they are required to include information about their data management plans in their grant proposals.

“Researchers see the value of sharing this data, but this is not a common practice which involves allocating time and resources. This means someone on their research team would have to organize and share the data. There are probably millions of data points (big data) when you consider how many horticulture researchers there are in the U.S.”

 Creating a central database
Based on the need for collecting and organizing the controlled environment research data that is being generated, the task force established the Controlled Environment Agriculture Open Data (CEAOD) project [https://ceaod.github.io/]. The project aims to promote data sharing to accelerate CEA research.

The CEAOD website provides guidelines on how to upload the data. The task force developed the guidelines, which include three sets of data that can be uploaded to the website.

“One set is environmental data, including environmental controlled parameters such as temperature, carbon dioxide, relative humidity, and ventilation,” he said. “These data points are usually collected automatically by sensors. Another set of data is biological data, which is usually collected by humans. These biomass production yield parameters include shoot and root biomass and plant height and weight. The final document is the metadata which are descriptions of the experimental setups and data sets. It is a file that explains the experiments. It describes how the experiments were done.

“There is a certain format that is recommended to be followed to upload the data on the CEAOD website. The step-by-step process is listed on the website. There are no restrictions on which crops the data can be submitted. Our goal is to establish a platform to host a large number of crop production data sets to allow for the development of machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms aimed at improving crop production efficiency.”

Leading by example
This winter GLASE will have a student collecting and organizing environmental and biological research data.

“The data will be uploaded to the CEAOD database and we will be documenting these activities,” Mattos said. “We will create a guideline of recommendations. We also plan to work with researchers from other institutions to demonstrate how the data can be organized and uploaded to create awareness and how to use the database.

“We hope this initial GLASE contribution will incentivize other researchers to share their data and will facilitate the uploading process. Access to the CEAOD database is free. It is an open platform and anyone can contribute to the development of this database tool.”

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Once research data is collected and available for dissemination, the equipment used to produce controlled environment crops will be able to optimize the environmental conditions for a wide variety of crops, including lettuce, tomatoes, and cannabis.

Benefits to the horticulture industry
Mattos said private companies would also benefit from the collection of data and creating a centralized database.

“These companies need more data because it would allow them to analyze the data to develop new products and identify new markets,” he said. “Unfortunately, many of these companies don’t want to share their data. They are very proprietary about their data. They see that collecting and analyzing this data can put them ahead of their competition.

“Many private companies see the need for more data and how it can be valuable but are unwilling to share their own data. But like in other industries there are early adopters. I believe there will be companies that step up and will share their data with the horticulture industry. Hopefully, industry people will be willing to contribute and work on this database as well.”

Mattos said one of the big applications with this project is related to machine learning and artificial intelligence.

“With these applications, large sets of data are needed in order to create baselines,” he said. “Using the data, machines can be taught. Currently, growers’ production knowledge and opinion are more accurate for growing crops than artificial intelligence predictions. Growers are still more reliable, but it is just a matter of time before the use of big data and artificial intelligence will be able to match the growers in regards to optimizing growth.

“We are trying to develop this platform between the growers and controlled environment researchers and the machine learning/data computer scientists. I’m not sure the controlled environment researchers have grasped the potential that is available. We are not using this technology. Establishing this platform, as we collect and disseminate the data, there is real potential to help the advancement of the horticulture industry.”

For more: Erico Mattos, Greenhouse Lighting and Systems Engineering (GLASE), (302) 290-1560; em796@cornell.edu.

More info on CEAOD
Want to learn more about the Controlled Environment Agriculture Open Data project? Then check out these two upcoming events.

Aug. 4, 2-3 p.m. EDT
GLASE webinar: Controlled Environment Agriculture Open Data project. Presented by Erico Mattos, executive director of GLASE, and Kenneth Tran, founder of Koidra LLC.

Aug. 13, 10:30 a.m.-12 p.m. EDT
American Society for Horticultural Science presentation: The Promise of Big Data and New Technologies in Controlled Environment Agriculture. Presented by Erico Mattos.

David Kuack is a freelance technical writer in Fort Worth, Texas; dkuack@gmail.com.

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Research For Workforce Development in Controlled Environment Ag: What Makes a Successful Indoor Farm Manager?

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By urbanagnews

June 8, 2020

As indoor agriculture has grown, finding, training, and retaining a skilled workforce has emerged as an important challenge to the industry. A unique combination of plant production, tech troubleshooting, and innovation is needed among employees managing these operations.

What are the critical skill sets, and how can we create a larger pipeline of individuals trained in these skills so that they can contribute to CEA business success?

At Cornell University, a group led by Professor Anu Rangarajan (Director, Small Farms Program) seeks to provide answers as part of a National Science Foundation-funded research project on CEA Viability in Metro Areas.

Rangarajan’s team has conducted extensive research to date in order to understand the workforce needs of the hydroponics industry, including greenhouses and indoor vertical farms—and the research continues.

With the long-term goal of creating robust curricula for training CEA employees in mind, a team from Cornell University conducted many in-depth interviews with professional CEA growers in 2018 and 2019.

The team then organized a workshop, in consultation with The Ohio State and Agritecture Consulting, that invited a focus group of CEA operations managers to model in detail the diverse activities that they perform on the job.

The resulting chart is a detailed, peer-reviewed list of duties (responsibilities) and tasks (activities, skills) that describe the work of the expert Indoor Farm Operations Manager.

The chart is currently being reviewed by peer growers worldwide, who are asked to verify how important each skill is, and how frequently it is conducted.

Based on this input, the Indoor Farm Operations Manager chart will be used as a starting point for prioritizing future CEA training modules. After that, a deeper analysis of key individual skills will be conducted in order to translate the foundational research into a teachable vocational curriculum.

Right now, however, Rangarajan’s team is actively seeking more responses to the verification survey.

“We need your help,” she emphasizes, speaking to professional CEA growers. “We want to learn your priorities for a CEA curriculum that will enhance the skills of current or future employees.”

The survey takes approximately thirty minutes to complete and can be completely anonymously. CEA growers who complete the survey will also be provided with an Amazon gift card for $25 as a token of appreciation, although they must provide their names and email addresses in order to receive this gift.

To take the survey, register here. The Cornell team will send a survey link directly from Qualtrics.

As Rangarajan notes, “Grower input will help us prioritize the core education and training relevant to indoor agriculture,” helping provide the industry with the skilled workforce it will need to scale.

For more information about this study regarding the future of the CEA workforce, please contact project lead Anu Rangarajan (ar47@cornell.edu) or research associate Wythe Marschall (wmarschall@fas.harvard.edu).

• TAGS Cornell University Education Indoor Farming