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The Digital and Data-Driven Demonstration Farm (4-D Farm): Juxtaposition of Climate-Smart and Circular Innovations for Future Farm Economies

The long-term goal of The Digital and Data-Driven Demonstration Farm (4-D Farm) is to develop climate-smart production systems leveraging renewable energy, automation, intelligence and human capital to meet the required food and fiber needs of a burgeoning world population. Most currently funded research is driven by individual commodity and discipline needs and rarely investigates integrating multiple agricultural enterprises to improve farm resilience so that the farmer does not have all their “eggs in one basket”. In this project, data-driven farm strategies will be implemented to create an interdependent and diverse crop/livestock rotation that addresses the reduced effectiveness of chemical inputs, climate change effects, feeding an increasing population, loss of biodiversity and pollinators, water quality/quantity, rural economic stability, labor shortages and supply chain disruptions. These issues are addressed by the 4-D Farm: 1) Creating data-driven, integrated precision and climate-smart agriculture with intelligent automation technologies and solutions, 2) Developing and testing resilient agricultural practices and 3) Assessing the socioeconomic consequences of these new technologies and practices. The 4-D farm will be executed on a 90-acre D.A.T.A. (Demonstrating Applied Technology in Ag) farm at the Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College (ABAC), multiple Emerging Techology and Demonstration Site’s (ETDS’s) located on University of Georgia (UGA) research farms, and a Data Management and Analysis Center at the UGA Tifton Campus, Future Farmstead Carriage House. We have assembled an inter-disciplinary team in precision and climate-smart agriculture, data science, livestock management, peanut, cotton, and corn production, extension and education programming, and autonomous and intelligent rover research and development.

Funder: USDA NIFA

Amount: $3,999,359

PI: Glen Rains