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The NDSU Extension weekly podcast In the Pod: Soybean Updates delivers timely insights and expert advice on soybean production.
You're listening to In The Pod, Soybean Updates, a weekly trek into the latest soybean information from NDSU Extension. Soybean research is an ongoing mission. There are digital farming tools being developed and ready to use. Ignacio Ciampiti, professor of agronomy at Purdue University, has the inside story. Ignacio, what digital tool would be good for North Dakota farmers?
Ignacio Ciampiti:There are many out there, I mean, in terms of farming, digital tools. We are working on a few, for example, the variable soybean seed rate. I think that is for those that they are thinking about testing the way that we designed the tool in collaboration with Iowa Soybeans was thinking as the pilots on planes, they need to take hours of simulations in before they are ready really to fly. When you are deciding one decision that is so important as seeding rate for soybeans, one possibility is to use previous data that you have available from yield monitors. So that tool basically brings couple years of yield monitor data sets that you can use. And then from there, you can build prescription maps. That's one idea that can help farmers really to see how much variability and take decisions on seeing rates.
Bruce Sundeen:Tell us about the FIAT program.
Ignacio Ciampiti:Yeah. Fiat is something that is part of NASA acres. I usually try to go back to explain basically what NASA is doing for agriculture. NASA, when people think about as an institution, is a science organization that is focusing mainly on space, but there is one component that is really like sensing the earth. So that component that is sensing the earth is the NASA agriculture, the earth and science division. Within that division there are multiple aspects. One is focusing specifically on farmer problems and there are two consortiums that they are currently available and working on farmer problems is one is called NASA Harvest that is focusing on international agriculture and then NASA Acres that is focusing on domestic. So now within NASA Acres we build this new project that is called FIAT, Farmer Innovation Ambassador Team, that the main goal was really to help and co create with farmers on potential issues and ideas coming from the field that they can guide NASA Earth and Science Division and NASA ACRES into looking at different research problems so we can start building solutions based on remote sensing data.
Bruce Sundeen:Is there anything else you'd like to share?
Ignacio Ciampiti:Yeah. For example, the FIAT project is one of the, I would say, most exciting projects that I have been working with, but mainly because we are trying to put farmers. It's farmer centric, and it's really focusing on kind of our different scales. Is the scale of having farmers coming with questions and we help them to build some projects. And then at the same time, the second aspect is farmers involved in our committee because farmers can be part of the conversation and start guiding the decisions. And there is a third level that is start looking at how we can start building collaborations with local universities and check off and connect on and start providing better expertise of using remote sensing at local level. So if a farmer wants to get involved, for example, from North Dakota, so one approach would be to reach out to your check off, trusted researchers, and start thinking about a question that you would like to address using remote sensing data. And from there, we are creating basically all the integral parts of the problems to have all the people available to build the solutions.
Bruce Sundeen:Thanks, Ignacio. Our guest has been Ignacio Ciampiti, professor of agronomy at Purdue University. You're listening to In the Pod, Soybean Updates, a weekly trek into the latest soybean information from NDSU Extension, supported by the North Dakota Soybean Council.