A Hackathon for California Agriculture Is Coming Soon

The New New Thing by Michael Lewis was one of five seminal books about Internet 1.0, back in the last century. High tech, at its core processors, is about the continuous quest to find, perfect, appreciate and profit from the newest.

Precision agriculture is the new new thing. But new new comes with new problems.

You are invited to a hackathon to solve these new problems.

To wrestle the conundrums of natural resources into submission with sustainable agricultural technology solutions. The conundrums are universal — like drought, soil depletion, invasive species and doubling yields on the same amount of dirt.

To grow cheap, nutritious, good-tasting food. To create good-paying applied tech jobs in disadvantaged communities, where unemployment rages at 40 percent and food banks draw blocks-long lines.

To get farmers to adopt precision ag. “There is an inconvenience to practicing precision ag,” says agronomist and farm adviser Patrick Dosier of Sacramento, “because it involves variables across a variety of platforms and devices. Farmers tend to default to a single program.”

Hackathon participants have their work cut out for them, yes.

AgTech Roundtable members are working out the details now, and welcome your thoughts. Just send an email. Now, so you don’t forget.

There are 5 known hackathon parameters:

1. Because eating seems to be important and there are so many ag tech-related issues, this will be a series.
2. Our drought crisis drives the first hackathon, dubbed “Every Last Drop.” (Catchy, no?) Developers will focus on water management apps, devices and systems integration. The latter is key.
3. You will have access to one of the world’s largest and largely untapped mega-warehouses of data sets, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) water records.
4. You will be working at the Farm of the Future, owned by West Hills Community College (WHCC) in Coalinga, serving the nation’s largest growers.
5. It will be soon.

So watch this space for the date, time and other details!

Precision agriculture deploys technology to assess and apply the right amounts of water and ag chemicals (fertilizer, pesticide) to suit current soil and weather conditions, while maximizing yield.

Precision ag also is mechanization, using GPS-guided planting, maintenance and harvesting devices. Big gadgets are the norm in ag. Amazing machines, like the mechanical Edward Scissorhands that can whack weeds within a few centimeters of a tender green plant.

The AgTech Roundtable is a pro bono endeavor, including USDA and the California Department of Agriculture, WHCC, California Department of Technology, California Public Utilities Commission, the State Library, Valley Vision, San Joaquin Valley Broadband Consortium, AgraLogics and the California Association of Pest Control Advisers.

TechWire and The Gualco Group, Inc., are co-founders of the roundtable, which aspires to function as an open source connection among farmers, tech developers and government agencies.

Sort of a bridge between California’s two world-class Valleys — Central and Silicon.

This story was originally published by TechWire, a sister publication to Government Technology that covers IT in California state and local government.