Growing Food with Data

​Summary of: “Growing Food with Data" held on Friday, March 5, 2016 from 8:00-10:00 AM.‍

Witness how data science is about to feed 300 million new people by fundamentally transforming agriculture. The self-driving tractor in fields today places millions of seeds at millimeter accuracy in three dimensions while running at 10 MPH. As a planter traverses the field we dynamically control every variable about seed placement, including spacing, depth, and down force. On precision sprayers we independently vary the amount of product sprayed by nozzle-section.

At harvest, every grain moves through an array of onboard moisture and mass sensors to precisely measure yield as the combine advances. Data generated by a single farm operation is staggering. A massive tonnage of real-time target rate and actual measurement data is wirelessly streamed to the cloud through a mesh-network infrastructure. At this month’s CTO Roundtable, we saw how a data science pipeline activates the world’s largest ‘internet of things’ telematics streams to fundamentally transform an industry. This isn’t exploratory data analytics. We talked about how data science is weaponizing digital assets to create otherwise unreachably high yields, low costs, and new competitive footholds in adjacent marketplaces for ag companies.

The discussion was led by:

• John Sipple, the Chief Scientist at Sphere of Influence, a local analytics studio known for ground-breaking innovation using machine learning and advanced data science. John has applied his skill to aerospace, the intelligence community, agriculture, automotive, and cyber-security – just to name a few domains.
• Thad Scheer (CTO Roundtable Member) directs innovation for Sphere’s digital business strategy portfolio in Agriculture and Automotive. Thad will explain how data science combines with digital product development, making the case that data science without product innovation is like soup without a bowl.