UC Merced Magazine | Volume XVI, Issue I

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“There are a lot of challenges in balancing the needs of agriculture and ecosystems, and climate change and drought are only exacerbating difficult decisions about how to sustain water resources,” said Viers, the lead project director and the director of the campus’s branch of the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) and the Banatao Institute. “But our team of advisors, educators and scientists are eager to enable data-driven decision-making for securing a climate resilient future for our water-stressed regions.” The collaboration — Securing a Climate Resilient Water Future for Agriculture and Ecosystems through Innovations inMeasurement, Management andMarkets or SWIM— will work across disciplines in three testbeds with unique water policies and systems: Cache Valley, Utah; Mesilla Valley, NewMexico; and the San Joaquin Valley. All of them grow orchard crops and alfalfa, and all are in drought conditions. A Just Transition to SustainableAgriculture Civil & Environmental Engineering Professor Tom Harmon, director of the Sierra Nevada Research Institute, is also leading the Labor and Automation in California Agriculture (LACA) team, an interdisciplinary group comprising UCs Merced, Berkeley, Davis and Riverside, as well as UC ANR. LACA is supported by $3.1 million given through the prestigious MRPI program from the University of California Office of the President. “California is an agriculturally diverse and productive state, and yet its food system is vulnerable to climate change, regulatory change, water availability and unexpected disturbances. Agricultural workforce shortages are also negatively affecting our food system,” Harmon said. By partnering with farmers, workers, environmentalists and agriculturalists, LACA aims to create a new model for agricultural technology that is farmer- and worker-friendly while enhancingproductivity andenvironmental sustainability. PrecisionAgriculture and the Internet of Things UC Merced is also one of four campuses across the country uniting to meet the challenge of feeding a growing world population by developing precision agriculture for a sustainable future.

Led by the University of Pennsylvania, UC Merced, Purdue University and the University of Florida share in a $26 million, five-year National Science Foundation Engineering Research Centers grant to form the NSF Engineering Research Center for the Internet of Things for Precision Agriculture (IoT4Ag). The mission of IoT4Ag is to ensure food, energy and water security by developing technology to increase crop production while minimizing the use of energy and water resources and lessening the impact of agricultural practices on the environment. Collectively, the IoT4Ag Center will also create a diverse talent pipeline of K–12 and university students, engineers, agriculture professionals and other members of farming communities through audience-specific lessons and hands-on classroom, laboratory and field activities. “We aimto engineer cost-effective systems that farmerswill adopt,” said UC Merced Professor Catherine Keske, the campus lead. “We want to include everyone who has a perspective on engineering ag, from farmers, farm workers and the children of farm workers among our student body to government and industry partners.” Artificial IntelligenceWorking for theValley Sharing in a $20 million grant from the USDA-National Institute of Food and Agriculture in cooperation with the National Science Foundation, UC Merced is also part of a multi-institutional research collaborative to develop artificial intelligence — or AI — solutions to tackle some of agriculture’s biggest challenges related to water management, climate change and integration of new technology into farming. While traditional AI development involves scientists making tools and delivering them to end-users, the AgAID Institute will involve the people who will use the AI solutions — from farmers and workers to policy makers — in their development. The Institute, led by Washington State University, is working closely with UC Merced on several educational pathways from K-12 through higher education and worker training. The goal is to raise AgSTEM skill levels and open new career paths in AI and digital agriculture, which can improve pay and quality of life for agricultural workers.

We want to include everyone who has a perspective on engineering ag, from farmers, farm workers and the children of farm workers among our student body to government and industry partners.

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