Here at Consumer Corner, we value the cross-pollination of ideas, open-access materials freely available for public consumption and (of course) data-driven decisions. Recently, I was thrilled to be invited to participate in the Data-Driven Agriculture: Today’s Possibilities, Tomorrow’s Potential Digital Ag Webinar Series. I delivered a webinar titled Public Data for the Public Good that pulled from a variety of our ongoing and recently published pieces about online and social media data in the public policy arena or marketplace.
According to the Purdue Digital Ag Resources website, “In this series, researchers from across the College of Agriculture and beyond showcased how they are using data to improve crop, livestock and forest management decisions, increase produce safety, quickly identify disease outbreaks in livestock, and much more.”
This past spring, hosts Dr. Dennis Buckmaster, Professor of Agricultural and Biological Engineering and Dean’s Fellow for Digital Agriculture, and Dr. Bruce Erickson, Agronomy Education Distance and Outreach Director, led viewers through weekly topics ranging from digital forestry to precision soil mapping to deep-learning for weed identification.
“We like the webinar format for a broad audience, as it can take a complicated topic and make it more relatable for those who don’t work in it every day,” said Erickson. “That’s why Dennis and I facilitate these discussions and sometimes interrupt to chime in about something important in the moment, moderate participant questions and always have a few questions of our own up our sleeves.”
Freely available, full-length webinars from experts on cutting-edge and impactful topics could be valuable for producers and educators, as class materials, or for interested citizens who want to know more about how agriculture uses data today. Given the interest in data analytics and data-driven decision making in agriculture, this rich series deserves a review.
To view the entire series, check out the Data-Driven Agriculture playlist on Purdue Agriculture’s YouTube channel or click the links below for more information about individual webinars.
- Precision Soil Maps: Moving Beyond Soil Survey by Jason Ackerson, Assistant Professor of Agronomy, Purdue University
- The Cover Up: UAV Assessment of Soybean by Shaun Casteel, Associate Professor of Agronomy and Extension Soybean and Small Grains Specialist, Purdue University
- UAVs in Livestock Production by John Scott, Extension Coordinator for Digital Agriculture, Purdue University
- Partnering with Industry to Move from Reactive to Proactive: A Dairy Farm Example by Jackie Boerman, Assistant Professor of Animal Sciences, Purdue University, and Paul Ousterhout, iYOTAH
- Digital Forestry: Key Developments in Terrestrial Remote Sensing by Brady Hardiman, Assistant Professor of Forestry and Natural Resources, Purdue University; Guofan Shao, Professor of Forestry and Natural Resources, Purdue University; and Ayman Habib, Professor of Civil Engineering, Purdue University
- On Farm Experimentation by Robert Nielsen, Professor of Agronomy and Extension Corn Specialist, Purdue University
- Digital Forestry: Key Developments in Aerial Remote Sensing by Songlin Fei, Professor of Forestry and Natural Resources and Dean’s Chair of Remote Sensing, Purdue University; Joe Hupy, Associate Professor of Aviation Technology, Purdue University; and Jinha Jung, Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering, Purdue University
- Data in Produce Safety by Amanda Deering, Clinical Associate Professor of Food Science, Purdue University, and Jennifer Crandall, CEO, Safe Food En Route, LLC
- Putting a Price on Data by Nathan DeLay, Assistant Professor of Agricultural Economics, Purdue University
- How Good is Deep-Learning for Weed Identification Using UAV-Imagery by Dharmendra Saraswat, Associate Professor of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Purdue University, and Varun Aggarwal, Graduate Student in Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Purdue University
- Smarter Treatment of Livestock Disease by Mohit Verma, Assistant Professor of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Purdue University, and Aaron Ault, Senior Research Engineer, Purdue University
- Practical Applications for UAVs by John Scott, Extension Coordinator for Digital Agriculture, Purdue University
- Public Data for the Public Good by Nicole Widmar, Professor and Associate Head of Agricultural Economics, Purdue University
- Machines and Robotics by John Evans, Assistant Professor of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Purdue University, and David Cappelleri, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University
The entire fall 2020 webinar series is also available here or by clicking the individual webinar links below.
- Put Your Smartphone to Work by Dennis Buckmaster, Professor of Agricultural and Biological Engineering and Dean’s Fellow for Digital Agriculture, Purdue University
- Choose the Path of Least Resistance for Your Data by Yang Wang, Graduate Research Assistant in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University
- Sensors, The Possibilities are Endless by Gaganpreet Hundal, Graduate Research Assistant in Computer and Information Technology, Purdue University
- Make Sense of Your Sensors by Andrew Balmos, Data/Software Engineer, Purdue University, and John Scott, Digital Agriculture Extension Coordinator, Purdue University
- Hammer is to Nail as API is to Software by Andrew Balmos, Data/Software Engineer, Purdue University, and Zach Mason, Senior Software Engineer, Wabash Heartland Innovation Network
- Create Savvy Spreadsheets to Work Better for You by Dennis Buckmaster, Professor of Agricultural and Biological Engineering and Dean’s Fellow for Digital Agriculture, Purdue University
- Dig into Data within Your Spreadsheets by Dennis Buckmaster, Professor of Agricultural and Biological Engineering and Dean’s Fellow for Digital Agriculture, Purdue University
- Meet LoRa, Your New Best Friend by Andrew Balmos, Data/Software Engineer, Purdue University, and Jack Stucky, Vice President of Engineering, Wabash Heartland Innovation Network
- Extend the Power of Your Spreadsheets by Dennis Buckmaster, Professor of Agricultural and Biological Engineering and Dean’s Fellow for Digital Agriculture, Purdue University
- GROW Your Field Knowledge by Andrew Balmos, Data/Software Engineer, Purdue University
“We certainly had a themes for these series, but we also believe most of these webinars are useful as stand-alone sessions,” said Buckmaster. “We hope these presentations and discussions have lasting value for educators and students at high school and college levels and, of course, the general public.”
ConsumerCorner.2021.Article.07
