By Clint Thompson
The groundbreaking for the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) Center for Applied Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Agriculture is scheduled for Nov. 7 at the Gulf Coast Research and Education Center in Balm, Florida.
Scott Angle, UF/IFAS Senior Vice President, discussed the historic groundbreaking, which supports UF/IFAS as the Silicon Valley of Agriculture. It’s an important investment that will expedite AI’s role in agriculture and lessen the need for labor.
“A lot of areas where fruits and vegetables are primarily produced, so southern Georgia, a good part of Florida, rely on hand labor, and as everyone knows, we’re losing a lot of that hand labor. We’re going to continue to lose labor,” Angle said. “While we get some relief in the short term through Congress or state laws, we’re just not going to have labor in the future. We need robots, artificial intelligence, drones, all of these things doing that type of work.
“The focus is going to be integrating artificial intelligence into agriculture to drive the robots and drive the drones and make decisions about weeds or crops to spray or not to spray.”
The Florida Legislature appropriated a significant amount of money to start the AI in Agriculture Research Center in Balm, Florida; a region where most of the state’s strawberries are grown.
Event Details
The groundbreaking is being held as part of a celebration for the UF/IFAS campus which is celebrating 100 years of agricultural innovation. The program will begin at 9 a.m., with the groundbreaking scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Field tours will be held from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.
“On Nov. 7 we’ll be breaking ground. Any of the audience that is in that area are welcomed to come by. It’ll be in the morning, and we’d love to see them,” Angle said.