The Digital Tools, Geospatial, and Farming System Consortium (DGFSC) held one of the first in-person workshop at the University of Colorado Boulder, from February 28th to March 2nd.
The meeting was led by the Principal Investigator (PI) Ignacio Ciampitti, together with the participation of the co-PIs Jason Neff, Molly Brown, Kathryn Grace, James Gerber, and Paul West(all attending in-person), and Amirpouyan Nejadhashemi and Zhenong Jin (both attending remotely). In addition, team members from all universities participating in the consortium were post-doctoral students Michael Eggen, Ana Carcedo, and Nilson Vieira Junior, and graduate students Luciana Nieto, Carlos Hernandez, and Kieron Moller, together with our communication specialist Constanza Mackrey.
The purpose of the workshop was to discuss new strategies and the development of new tools to work on the future steps of the DGFSC consortium.
The DGFSC has been working on the main objectives since a year and half ago (further details can be found at https://digitalconsortium.wixsite.com/dgfsc). Briefly, the first objective is mainly linked to the development of crop and livestock modeling, crop and animal integration while considering land capability for agriculture. The second objective is the development of critical remote sensing products, mapping degraded-lands, climate-related risks, and crop sensibility. The third objective pertains to a human and social component, modeling for households, human nutrition and climate. Finally, the fourth objective is the evaluation of ag innovation scaling products and evaluation under current and future climates. All these objectives will lead the consortium on the direction of establishing and testing new innovations with the long-term goal of improving the resilience of smallholder livelihoods for enhancing productivity, economics, environment and social aspects of human wellbeing.
“This workshop was a great opportunity to connect with all team members, discuss current strategies and plan for future research and training efforts to be deployed during the coming years”, Dr. Ciampitti stated.
The Digital Ag consortium is planning to have a second in-person workshop during 2022 (end of September) with the goal of evaluating progress and discussing milestones for the near future.