The future of agriculture - precise, or ecological?

The setup is prime for a well-worn cliche: big data, machine learning, venture capital, accelerators. Silicon Valley is moving in to the Central Valley. As a "second wave" in agricultural development, "AgTech" and "precision agriculture" seek to transform how modern agricultural systems operate.  This growing, tech-savvy field claims to offer solutions to many of the environmental and social problems stemming from agricultural systems. However, these efforts largely operate as parallel and separate from existing sustainable agriculture and alternative food system communities, many of whom advocate for a transformation away from technological agriculture and towards ecological agriculture. So what will the future of "sustainable agriculture" look like? Precise, or ecological? In this talk, I'll address these questions. I'll review some of the most prominent "AgTech"/precision agriculture technologies currently being developed and deployed, demonstrate a drone-mounted multispectral imaging system, and discuss how some of these technologies could be integrated into an ecological approach to agriculture.

Speaker: Graeme Baird, UC Santa Cruz