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K-State Research and Extension
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December 22, 2020

K-State Researcher to Direct a New Consortium of $3M Grant for Developing Digital Geospatial Tools for Improving Resilience of Farming Systems

Submitted by Layne Wilson

A Kansas State University researcher received a $3,000,000 grant from the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Collaborative Research on Sustainable Intensification (SIIL) to improve the resilience of smallholder livelihoods through the application of digital and geospatial decision support tools under diverse farming systems.

Ignacio Ciampitti, an associate professor in K-State’s Department of Agronomy, will lead the 3-year project and serve as the Director of the “Digital, Geospatial and Farming Systems Consortium – Building a new era of Predictive Agricultural Innovation.” This new consortium will involve experts in farming systems (crop-livestock integration), modeling, mobile technologies and remote sensing for crop mapping, production and human nutrition.

The team for this consortium comes from five U.S. universities establishing a strong collaboration with team members in the targeted countries (Senegal, Cambodia and Bangladesh).

“This consortium will build upon the five domains (productivity, economics, environment, social and human condition) of the sustainable intensification framework, developing an interdisciplinary and solution-oriented geospatial framework, integrating remote sensing, farming systems modeling, and geospatial data layers to provide innovative data products to take actions toward more resilient farming systems, benefiting families and communities,” Ciampitti said.

“The consortium will focus on strengthening collaboration with industry partners.” Ciampitti said. “The initial founding members are Corteva Agriscience, Microsoft, Descartes Labs, and aWhere, assisting on building data products and providing support in the outreach goal.”

Ciampitti said members of the consortium bring with them expertise on developing digital support tools, evaluation of land suitability, crop-livestock integration, data science analytical skills, farming systems modeling and remote sensing for crop mapping, production and human nutrition. This expertise provides critical opportunities for innovation in the digital agriculture space.

The main outputs of this consortium will be focused on developing new and improve existing geospatial data products leveraging digital technology for creating new farming innovations for smallholder farmers.

Vara Prasad, university distinguished professor and director of the SIIL, said “Providing access to simple digital tools to researchers, extension personnel, policy makers and practitioners will allow them to make informed decisions to minimize risk and improve resilience of people and farming systems.”

“The consortium will seek opportunities for training undergraduate and graduate students in the targeted countries in the main skillset related to data science,” Ciampitti said. “This will be accomplished by establishing more integration between this consortium via SIIL and the primary projects already in place on the targeted countries.”

Ciampitti received the grant from the SIIL, managed by Kansas State University and funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development as part of Feed the Future, the government’s global hunger and food security initiative.

The new consortium, under the direction of Ignacio Ciampitti, also includes researchers from University of Colorado (Jason Neff), University of Minnesota (Paul West, James Gerber, Zhenong Jin, and Kathryn Grace), Michigan State University (Amirpouyan Nejadhashemi), and University of Maryland (Molly Brown), and with critical integration of industry partners with the opportunity of expanding the number of members on the consortium.