Doubling Down on Data: Giving You the Edge in Agriculture

Tuesday, November 16, 1:15- 2:45 pm EST

Farming, technology, and research experts examine the role of data and data interoperability to improve farm profitability and reduce the impact of agriculture on global warming and the planet’s health.  While agriculture contributes negatively to GHG emission, it also presents the potential to sequester carbon, manage water and other process inputs and help remove carbon from the atmosphere. Making climate-smart decisions competitive along the ag supply chain requires access to data that define and quantify their financial benefits to the farmer and mechanisms for better consumer price signals. The farm community closely holds information about farming practices for privacy, competitiveness, and operations management. However, third parties have developed effective mechanisms and collaboration platforms for data sharing in the ag industry.  Panelists will examine integrating these platforms and ground-truthing the analyses and models, getting agreement among farmers on the privacy and use of the data, and offering more comprehensive farmer services and climate benefits. ASU LightWorks sponsors the session.

Meet the Panel

Sally Rockey Executive DirectorFoundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR). Dr. Sally Rockey is the inaugural Executive Director of the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research. FFAR leads public-private partnerships to support bold science in agriculture. Its research, co-created with the agriculture community, fills critical research gaps. FFAR also invests in the future scientific workforce. Before FFAR, Ms. Rockey was a leader in federal research, overseeing the operations of the extramural research programs in both agriculture and biomedicine.

Debbi Reed Executive Director Ecological Services Market Consortium Ms. Reed has led ESMC since 2019. EMSC is a member-based organization launching a national-scale ecosystem services market program for agriculture to recognize and reward farmers and ranchers for their environmental services to society. Her role in leading the ESMC builds on decades of experience in agriculture climate change mitigation and sustainability efforts at the national and international levels.

W. Banks Baker – Manager, Animal Welfare and Agriculture: Supply Chain Sustainability McDonald’s Mr. Baker leads McDonald’s agriculture technology efforts. He focuses on monitoring and measurably improving animal health and welfare while increasing production efficiencies, and gathering, tracking, and validating the progress of sustainability commitments. He creates and implements comprehensive protein sustainability strategies including outcome-based corporate supply chain animal health and welfare programs.

Mark ManfredoModerator – ASU’s Morrison School of Agribusiness at the W. P. Carey School of Business Prof. Manfredo’s research focuses on commodity price analysis and agribusiness risk management, with particular emphasis on futures and options markets and price forecasting. His work has appeared in leading applied economics and agribusiness journals. Professor Manfredo served as the Director of the Morrison School of Agribusiness and as an Associate Dean for the ASU W. P. Carey School of Business.

Dorn Cox, Co-founder, FarmOS

Dorn is a founding member of the Farm Hack community, the executive director for GreenStart, and a farmer working a 250-acre multigenerational family farm. His participatory research focuses on collaborative open-source research and development for regenerative agricultural systems. Dorn is the team lead for The Open Technology Ecosystem for Agricultural Management (OpenTEAM. This is a collaborative community of farmers, scientists and researchers, engineers, farm service providers, and food companies that are committed to improving soil health and advancing agriculture’s ability to become a solution to climate change.

https://vimeo.com/646620504