Middle Tennessee Digital Agriculture Center

“The global food system must become more sustainable. Digital agriculture — digital and geospatial technologies to monitor, assess and manage soil, climatic and genetic resources — illustrates how to meet this challenge so as to balance the economic, environmental and social dimensions of sustainable food production” (Basso & Antle, 2020, p. 254). The prospect of digitalization begs the question: how can we facilitate the shift to a new way of working in agricultural science (Shepherd et al., 2018)? One answer to that question involves teaching related skills to youth and youth-educators in an effort to create a network of young agriculturists who will spur innovation in the ag-tech sector.

Therefore, at MTSU, we have developed the first Digital Agriculture Center in Tennessee! This center will feature a series of interwoven student and non-formal educator projects as well as community outreach events to forge a strong Digital Agriculture/Data Science education program focused on the youth of Tennessee.

The Digital Agriculture Center will offer two signature events each year: a Digital Agriculture Summer Camp for high school students (9-11) and Digital Agriculture Academy for non-formal educators (e.g. afterschool educators, scout leaders, 4-H Youth Development Agents, FFA Advisors, camp counselors, and others). Finally, please also check out our Resources Page showcasing how IoT (Digital Tools and Data Analytics) has already been used in Agriculture and Life Sciences.

If you have questions, please contact Dr. Chaney Mosley at Chaney.Mosley@mtsu.edu or Dr. Song Cui at Song.Cui@mtsu.edu. Additionally, you are welcomed to learn more about other programs offered at the School of Agriculture, the Data Science Institute, and the Tennessee STEM Education Center.

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Check out the MTSU Digital Agriculture Center in the News:

• USDA-National Institute of Food and Agriculture Press Release
• MTSU Announcement
• RFD-TV News
• Tennessee Farmer Coop News
• MTSU-“Out of Blue” May 2022 Episode

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The Digital Agriculture Center is supported by the Food and Agricultural Non-formal Education Program (grant no. 2021-67037-35972) from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture.