The Future of Digital Agriculture

When the Center for Digital Agriculture (CDA) launched in 2018, they were looking forward to the future. Like many other areas of commerce and big tech, agriculture is a rapidly changing industry. Advancements in technology have transformed farming. In the five-plus years since its launch, CDA has risen to meet those needs by creating adaptable, interdisciplinary curriculums, research programs, industry partnerships and training opportunities for scientists and students.

This year, CDA is celebrating its successes and more at the annual Center for Digital Agriculture conference, hosted right here on the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign campus at the iHotel and Illinois Conference Center. With a slate of new leadership, CDA has hosted the biggest and brightest conference yet with a theme of the “Future of Digital Agriculture,” an ambitious theme for an even more ambitious organization. CDA’s efforts to sustain the current needs of agriculture and anticipate future needs have been highly successful so far, with programs designed to train new experts in digital agriculture and repeated success in obtaining competitive grants for research in digital agriculture.

Each year, CDA builds upon the research and accomplishments of the last and showcases them at this annual conference. Digital Agriculture is at the forefront of the blending of supercomputing resources and academic research, and the projects on display at the conference showcase the highly applicable nature of CDA’s efforts. “The CDA conference was a great opportunity for me to connect with practitioners and get a new perspective on the challenges in Ag,” said Katie Driggs-Campbell, a presenter and assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering at UIUC. “Connecting with experts in different areas and outside of academia gave new insights on the real concerns and of the potential impacts our research can have on our food systems.”

More than 150 attendees had their choice of topics from a robust agenda that included experts in academia and industry speaking on topics ranging from automation in crop production to supply chain models to catalyzing a circular bioeconomy to applying human-centered design in ag. The one-day conference was packed with information and provided attendees with a host of tools and knowledge to take away.

Yongsheng Chen, a professor of civil and environmental engineering from Georgia Tech, delivered the keynote presentation titled “Coupling Resource Recovery with Digital Agriculture and AI to Enhance Urban Sustainability and Resilience.”

“I am excited about being the keynote speaker,” Chen said. “CDA provides a dynamic platform that brings together diverse perspectives and expertise in the field. My speech aims to highlight the crucial role CDA plays in fostering collaboration, innovation, and knowledge exchange.”

His presentation set the stage nicely for the conference theme. “My message focused on emphasizing how digital agriculture holds the potential to instigate meaningful and sustainable change in the agricultural sector,” he said. 

Attendees often mentioned his address when talking about conference highlights. Ariel Polk, a livestock research assistant from Tuskeegee University, said, “It’s my second time attending the CDA conference. It’s been awesome.” She went on to describe Chen’s presentation as the highlight of all the things she attended. “Dr. Chen spoke about reusing waste and water to convert it to nutrient-filled water to promote higher efficiency in agricultural growth. That was cool. I didn’t even know you could do that. He described ways to extract nutrients from waste, like in waterways throughout the city. And I think that’s a great use of water and reclamation.”

Attendees included a mix of academics, students and industry professionals. Alan Singleton might not seem like the kind of attendee you’d find at an agriculture conference. As the president of Singleton Law Firm, with a specialization in legal services for tech entrepreneurs, he found the discussions enlightening and inspiring.

“As I listened to the presentation of technical solutions or approaches to a specific challenge in agriculture, I couldn’t help but think about their applications beyond the immediate context,” he said. “Each time a speaker introduced a method or technology and its application to a specific ag problem, it sparked me to think about parallel applications to other problems in ag, as well as other industries. It’s fascinating to consider how these concepts while being applied in agriculture, are applicable and beneficial across a variety of sectors.”

Gerald Wilson, the director of entrepreneurship at EnterpriseWorks found the conference to have good strategic value for his clients. “We have a number of companies who are building on some of the technology platforms that we heard about over the course of the day so far,” Wilson said. “From my perspective, it’s helpful to understand what’s at the cutting edge of the industries in which our startups are operating. That way, we can understand the competitive landscape, we can understand the value chains in which these companies are building, and we can better think through how to advise them on their growth strategy.”