Cornell Students Tackle Agricultural Challenges with Technology at In-Person Digital Agriculture Hackathon
From Mar. 11 to Mar.13, Schurman Hall bustled with dialogue as groups of 4 to six Cornellians merged complex, company and agricultural awareness to tackle issues based close to foodstuff and farming for the duration of Cornell Initiative for Electronic Agriculture’s fourth annual hackathon. The party returned in-particular person after likely digital for a calendar year thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In accordance to Prof. Samuel Alcaine, food stuff science, who serves as the event’s co-chair, the hackathon welcomed both equally undergraduate and graduate scholar members from a variety of fields of examine, including laptop science, economics and plant science. The group troubles were being built to be cross-disciplinary, so teams benefitted from having users with various talent sets.
Alcaine explained the event as more of an “Ideationthon”, a notion that emphasizes the creativity of ideas presented, fairly than a hackathon. Tasks required a combine of components to be effective, as they were being also judged on marketability, novelty and feasibility rather than purely technological energy.
“We have all these main worries, but it is not one particular human being that is likely to solve them,” Alcaine mentioned. “It’s heading to be a team of men and women with various backgrounds.”
As an animal science key, participant Colin Kadis ’22 felt his knowledge with agriculture and dairy management was helpful to his crew. Their undertaking, named Buen Equipo, prepared to offer augmented reality goggles to farmworkers to enable them monitor their protection and productiveness. The goggles have an overlay on the edges of their vision that would provide facts on issues like exhaustion stages and the total of crops the staff harvested.
After a welcome ceremony and staff development on Friday, the competitors obtained to operate on their initiatives on Saturday morning. The groups been given enable from mentors, who had been experts in many fields and ranged from Cornell school to workforce at the sponsoring organizations this kind of as Microsoft and Bayer. Some participants stayed up performing until eventually as early as 1 a.m. on Sunday early morning, making web sites and tests demos to be shown off to the judges.
On Sunday early morning, each and every team offered their thoughts, showcasing their creative pitches and proficiency in devising punny workforce names. A vast selection of initiatives were on display, from Group That’s Bananas’ program to detect and stop the distribute of banana ailments, to Team Squander Knot’s application created to watch the freshness of foods in home fridges.
Group Hotpot, who proposed sensors inside of of vegetation that could notify farmers of disorder outbreaks, was a person of eight teams to advance to the closing round. Max Li ’23, just one of the members, famous that the function gave them a superior option to investigate and work with persons concerned with diverse disciplines.
“We’re so made use of to seeing things by way of our field, it is quick to make incorrect assumptions about linked industries,” Li claimed.
Soon after the last 8 groups offered as soon as much more, the judges returned from their deliberations and declared the winners.
Four teams received more compact prizes of $1,500 each. These bundled Crew Squander Knot, for addressing a grand societal problem Crew AgriBeesness, which sought to address bee shortages and maximize crop pollination, for the most novel venture Crew Rubbish Gobblers, which targeted on lowering cafe food items waste, for the entry with the most likely and Team Agriverse, who’s task aimed to save drinking water on dairy farms, for the finest use of data.
The grand prize-successful staff was Group 4 the (agri)tradition, which produced a platform identified as GoFarm to connect cacao farmers in West Africa to suppliers by way of the world-wide-web and limited message assistance.
In accordance to members of 4 the (agri)culture, the team’s challenge was impressed by an episode of the Netflix sequence “Rotten” that exposed challenges with the chocolate marketplace, in which farmers are routinely exploited and cheated out of funds. Whilst its users ended up strangers to each individual other prior to Friday, the successful crew worked alongside one another to earn the $2,000 prize.
Workforce 4 the (agri)culture also reported they ended up shocked to win. “We had no hopes of successful right until all-around lunchtime [Sunday],” one particular of the members Melissa Ginaldi ’22 stated. “We were being just striving to pull collectively a presentation.”
The staff, consisting of Ginaldi alongside with Ryan Dennis ’22, Lukas Gunderson grad, Samuel Meisner ’24, Ravipratap Misra grad and Ying Zuo grad said it would be pleasant to be equipped to carry their GoFarm platform in the authentic environment thanks to its affordable character and means to give again to society. Members acknowledged, however, that it would be hard to carry out.
“It’s this kind of a huge step,” Gunderson said. “We’d most likely have to vacation to West Africa to put into action it.”
