Schedule: 8:30 AM - 12:30 PM

Farmers experiment on their farm every year to learn how to use new inputs, techniques and technologies, but also to invent new ways to farm. This has been the process through which agriculture has evolved over the last millennia; they do it whether or not scientists are involved.  Traditionally, scientists have not been involved because of the lack of scientific rigor in farmer-led OFE. However, digital agriculture opens new possibilities for learning from farmer-centric OFE. But why would scientists want to be involved, what’s in it for them.

The workshop will conduct discussions among scientists to better define the value proposition of farmer-centric OFE via seminars, small group activities, and discussions. The outputs of these discussions will be compiled to generate a publication defining the value proposition of farmer-centric OFE for scientists.

Target audience: Scientists, Agronomists, Practitioners, and Farmers 
Requirements: Participants will be asked to consult documentation ahead of the workshop but no equipment will be needed from them during the workshop.
Language: English

This very hands-on workshop will teach participants to use all components of the difm.farm platform, which will allow them to run full-field, on-farm precision experiments (OFPEs) on their own fields.  Hundreds of crop consultants, farmers, academics and professional agronomists in the U.S., Canada, and South African are now using difm.farm to run agronomic field trials using precision agriculture technology.  difm.farm is a public resource developed by the Data-Intensive Farm Management Project, which is a consortium of agricultural researchers from over 30 academic institutions.  difm.farm can be used for free by anyone with internet access.  Interested parties can go to https://difm.farm to learn more.

What participants will learn how to use the user-friendly difm.farm platform to:

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