Welcome to FarmBits
Nebraska Extension Digital Agriculture
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09/14/2020
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Welcome to FarmBits! In this episode, podcast hosts Samantha Teten and Jackson Stansell tell a little bit of their stories and provide an overview of what the FarmBits podcast will offer in its weekly episodes. Topics such as the origin of the podcast name, how the idea for the podcast evolved, and the objectives of the podcast are covered. While this episode doesn't involve an interview component, future episodes will focus on interviews with experts in the topic being covered.
E-Mail: farmbits@unl.edu
Twitter: @NEDigitalAg
Samantha's Twitter: @SamanthaTeten
Jackson's Twitter: @jstansell87
Opinions expressed by the hosts and guests on this podcast are solely their own, and do not reflect the views of Nebraska Extension or the University of Nebraska - Lincoln.
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- [00:00:10.320]Welcome to the FarmBits Podcast, a product of Nebraska Extension Digital
- [00:00:13.920]Agriculture. I'm Jackson Stansell and I'm Samantha
- [00:00:17.039]Teten, and we come to you each week to discuss the trends,
- [00:00:20.400]the realities, and the value of digital agriculture
- [00:00:23.840]through interviews and panels with experts, producers, and innovators from
- [00:00:28.000]all sectors of digital technology, we hope that you step away from each
- [00:00:32.000]episode with new practical knowledge of digital agriculture technology.
- [00:00:38.320]Hello, and welcome to the first episode of the FarmBits Podcast.
- [00:00:42.079]I'm Jackson Stansell, and I'm Samantha Teten, and we will be your hosts each
- [00:00:46.480]week on the FarmBits Podcast. To begin we would like to introduce
- [00:00:50.800]ourselves and provide a little background for you to get to know us
- [00:00:53.840]better. Sam, would you like to get us started?
- [00:00:56.559]Sure! So hi everyone, I'm Samantha Teten, and I'm a master's student in Dr.
- [00:01:02.079]Luck's lab which is the same lab as Jackson and I'm getting a degree in Mechanized
- [00:01:07.119]Systems Management. I grew up on a corn and soybean farm in
- [00:01:10.640]Southeast Nebraska in the village of Johnson where I was the typical farm kid
- [00:01:15.280]in 4-H and FFA and basically from the sixth grade I
- [00:01:18.960]have known I wanted to work in agriculture.
- [00:01:21.439]And ever since then every interaction I have with growers
- [00:01:24.799]or on internships makes me certain I'm in the right
- [00:01:28.240]industry and in good company. I attended the University of Nebraska - Lincoln for
- [00:01:32.560]my undergraduate degree in Agronomy and then decided to further my education
- [00:01:36.320]with a master's degree with a focus on precision agriculture,
- [00:01:40.400]all with the intention of landing a job in industry.
- [00:01:43.759]Over the past few years, I have interned with Helena, Syngenta,
- [00:01:47.119]Pioneer, and my brother's crop consulting business,
- [00:01:50.159]and I've loved competing on the UNL soil judging team over the past few years.
- [00:01:54.640]My research focuses on sensor based nitrogen management using both UAVs
- [00:01:59.119]and active crop canopy sensors on non-irrigated
- [00:02:02.560]on-farm research sites. Awesome, thanks Sam!
- [00:02:06.479]My name is Jackson Stansell and I'm your other host and I'm a master's student in
- [00:02:10.560]Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering at the University of
- [00:02:14.080]Nebraska - Lincoln. Prior to starting my master's at
- [00:02:17.040]Nebraska, I graduated from Harvard where I studied Bio-environmental Engineering
- [00:02:21.120]and played football for the Crimson. Though i lived in several states when I
- [00:02:25.040]was younger, I did most of my growing up in Southeast Alabama so Alabama is home
- [00:02:29.040]to me. I didn't grow up on a farm but was
- [00:02:32.080]around agriculture a lot in my hometown of Dothan, Alabama, which is the
- [00:02:35.760]self-proclaimed "Peanut Capital of the World"
- [00:02:38.160]and home of the National Peanut Festival. I had an opportunity to work with
- [00:02:42.239]precision agriculture as an undergraduate intern and was immediately
- [00:02:46.080]hooked, so I decided to go to grad school for Ag
- [00:02:48.560]Engineering with a focus in site-specific crop management.
- [00:02:52.319]Since coming to the University of Nebraska, my master's research has
- [00:02:55.360]focused on using high-resolution geospatial data,
- [00:02:58.640]particularly aerial imagery, to guide in-season fertigation management
- [00:03:02.319]decisions. Most of this research has been conducted
- [00:03:05.760]on farm in conjunction with the On-Farm Research Network
- [00:03:08.800]and I've really enjoyed getting to learn about irrigated agriculture and pushing
- [00:03:12.159]the boundaries of fertigation management in the most practical research
- [00:03:15.519]scenarios possible. So Jackson, I know everyone asks you this
- [00:03:20.319]but what made you decide to come to the good life of Nebraska
- [00:03:23.599]and make the move from the East Coast? Sure, so
- [00:03:27.120]when I was an undergraduate at Harvard, I had a signals and systems class
- [00:03:31.280]where we were kind of looking at image analysis
- [00:03:34.400]and how to use Fourier transforms and filters and all that sort of stuff
- [00:03:38.799]and believe it or not I was just looking for things to get interested in because
- [00:03:42.640]the class was very biomedically focused. But we had an opportunity to do projects
- [00:03:46.400]outside of biomedical engineering and I stumbled
- [00:03:49.680]across precision agriculture as an area where
- [00:03:52.000]image analysis was was really coming into play as a kind of a practical
- [00:03:56.480]application of what we were learning and so I did a project
- [00:04:00.080]involving normalized difference vegetation index and trying to assess
- [00:04:03.680]crop health from aerial imagery and I was
- [00:04:07.760]really interested in what I was learning and trying to do. So
- [00:04:11.680]I explored internships and I actually found an internship out here at the
- [00:04:14.720]University of Nebraska with the On-Farm Research Network and my
- [00:04:19.440]mentor during that time was Laura Thompson, so I
- [00:04:22.639]came out here during the summer of 2017 and worked for Laura Thompson and
- [00:04:27.120]enjoyed that experience so much and the opportunity to work with
- [00:04:30.000]precision ag that I decided to stay on and work with her
- [00:04:33.680]as a remote intern, writing articles and working on tools for growers to use.
- [00:04:39.360]Ultimately that led us to trying to develop the idea for a podcast
- [00:04:45.040]and it wasn't acted upon at the time back
- [00:04:47.919]in 2018 but now that you and I are both here as
- [00:04:51.280]graduate students it's been something that I think
- [00:04:54.560]we've both talked about and been passionate about
- [00:04:57.919]and so really that whole internship that I had is why I'm here today and why
- [00:05:02.880]we're working on this podcast. Samantha and I are both really
- [00:05:06.639]passionate about digital agriculture site-specific crop management and
- [00:05:10.400]helping producers and that's why we're here. We're really excited to
- [00:05:14.080]explore digital agriculture more through this podcast each week
- [00:05:18.720]and so I guess now that we've both pretty thoroughly introduced ourselves
- [00:05:22.320]we want to get to the real meat of the episode which is to tell you why we're
- [00:05:25.280]here and what we're going to talk about. So
- [00:05:28.240]first, let's address the name. The name of this podcast is FarmBits
- [00:05:32.479]which is a play on the word "bit" which is the most fundamental unit
- [00:05:36.479]of information in digital applications and computing. As
- [00:05:40.479]you may know, bits may take the value of either 0
- [00:05:44.320]or 1. When they are strung together, they form binary strings
- [00:05:48.400]and a group of 8 binary digits is commonly called a byte.
- [00:05:52.560]So you may be familiar with bytes from words such as megabyte,
- [00:05:55.840]gigabyte, and terabyte, which define the storage capacity on your phone,
- [00:06:00.160]or your computer, or the usb drive you may use to store your yield monitor data.
- [00:06:05.759]The reason we decided to play off the word bits
- [00:06:08.080]is because the focus of this podcast is digital agriculture
- [00:06:11.360]and agricultural technology, and bits are the basis of
- [00:06:14.560]any digital system, but it's also used colloquially
- [00:06:18.400]to describe a small amount of something. So we aim each week to bring you
- [00:06:22.400]just a bit of information about digital agriculture
- [00:06:25.520]and ag technology. As producers, crop consultants, advisors, or other
- [00:06:31.280]agriculturalists, we understand you have a lot on your
- [00:06:33.919]plate every day as you fill the roles of agronomist,
- [00:06:36.800]marketer, technologist, mechanic, and many others at the same time,
- [00:06:40.960]so we are here to help you navigate the ever-evolving landscape of digital ag.
- [00:06:45.759]If you've been involved in the agricultural industry, for even a short
- [00:06:48.560]period of time, you are aware of the daily and
- [00:06:50.960]persistent challenges. Things such as commodity markets;
- [00:06:53.919]the decreasing number of chemical manufacturers and commodity processing
- [00:06:57.199]companies; the demand for sustainability,
- [00:06:59.919]transparency, and locality by your consumers, just to
- [00:07:03.360]name a few. We believe that digital agriculture can
- [00:07:07.520]be implemented to mitigate the impacts and open new possibilities to these
- [00:07:12.080]challenges. While not a silver bullet, digital ag
- [00:07:15.759]technologies are emerging and are getting better
- [00:07:18.240]year by year. Some have deemed the increasing availability and focus on
- [00:07:22.800]technology the fourth agricultural revolution. The
- [00:07:26.720]impacts of this revolution cannot possibly be determined at this point
- [00:07:30.240]but the progress and the potential for where it could take agriculture
- [00:07:34.160]is extremely exciting. For as exciting as these technologies
- [00:07:38.240]are, and all the perceived possibilities they create, adoption of ag technology is
- [00:07:42.720]slow, and many growers are still seeking the
- [00:07:44.960]value of these technologies on their farm.
- [00:07:47.520]The reality is that many agricultural technologies are still maturing
- [00:07:51.199]and need exposure in real world operations before they can be
- [00:07:54.639]practically implemented. On this podcast, we will cover the trends,
- [00:07:59.039]the realities, and the value of digital agriculture. We
- [00:08:02.560]will discuss technologies ranging from soil sensors
- [00:08:05.759]and testing, to drones and satellite imagery, and
- [00:08:09.199]everything in between. One thing that we want to make clear to begin with is that
- [00:08:13.360]we are not the experts in the vast majority of these topic areas,
- [00:08:17.039]so the way we'll approach these topics is by interviewing experts in the
- [00:08:20.479]particular area that we are covering. By bringing these
- [00:08:23.919]experts on the show, we'll be learning alongside you as we
- [00:08:27.759]explore the realm of digital ag. We'll be releasing 20 to 30 minute
- [00:08:32.240]podcasts every Thursday and we will seek to match
- [00:08:36.000]the topic area of which typical activities are going on
- [00:08:39.680]during that time of the year or with what's going on in current
- [00:08:43.200]events. If the description of this podcast has
- [00:08:46.320]piqued your interest and it sounds like the type of information that you'd like
- [00:08:49.360]to listen to each week, subscribe to the podcast and set your
- [00:08:52.959]notifications to let you know each time we release a podcast episode.
- [00:08:57.200]We would love to hear from you with your feedback,
- [00:08:59.440]so if you have comments or questions for us at any time
- [00:09:02.480]please reach out to us over email at NEDigitalAgTeam@365groups.unl.edu
- [00:09:05.760]on twitter @NEDigitalAg, our own personal twitter handles listed
- [00:09:12.480]in the show notes, or in the comments section on your favorite platform to
- [00:09:16.240]listen to podcasts. Thank you for taking the time to join us
- [00:09:20.640]today on the FarmBits Podcast. We would like to thank Nebraska
- [00:09:24.240]Extension for their support of this podcast
- [00:09:26.560]and their commitment to providing high quality informational material to
- [00:09:29.760]members of the agricultural community in Nebraska
- [00:09:32.320]and beyond. If you enjoyed this episode and it sounds like something you'd
- [00:09:36.080]listen to each week, subscribe to the podcast and
- [00:09:39.040]set your notifications to let you know each time we release a podcast.
- [00:09:43.360]We would love to hear from you with your feedback, so if you have comments or
- [00:09:46.880]questions for us, please reach out to us over email at
- [00:09:50.040]NEDigitalAgTeam@365groups.unl.edu, on twitter @NEDigitalAg,
- [00:09:55.279]or in the reviews section of your favorite podcast platform.
- [00:09:58.480]See you next week on another episode of FarmBits!
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