dorn

Thanks Jeff for getting this thread started. I hold the idea of mutually dependent independence as one of my core personal values. Through collaboration we can each have greater capacity to support our selves. There are so many skills and great thinking going on outside of the university and corporate structure, that has yet to organize. I think that almost every farm is already a research farm, testing new ideas and incorporating last year's observations into this years plans - however, most of the research isn't formal, published OR shared, and that there is tremendous potential, through collaboration, to gain from all the observations, successes and failures and to develop tools and research methods that are inexpensive, adaptive,open and easily accessible all. I also think that this type of adaptive, distributed tool and research method development are necessary in order to move from the centralized extractive model of production to a biologically based adaptive and regenerative model. Agriculture has a very special relationship to the stewardship of the environmental commons, so it seems quite right that the knowledge to best manage and improve the most fundamental of natural resources would also be held in the public domain. I am also excited about Farm Hack because, from its very start, it has collaboratively emerged as a product of its own users- just as a blacksmith forges his own tools. I see the emerging collaborative platform as being critical for taking the next steps in many of my own future projects and I look forward to helping to create Farm Hack into a way of working that we can all use to document, develop, design and build tools and standards and share our successes and failures. I know that I get more back for every effort that I put in, and that is key to achieving more mutually dependent independence.

http://opendatakit.org/

A while ago I started a wiki that I think picks up on some of this. Perhaps we could start to document the features and use cases with it. http://farmhack.org/tools/universal-adaptive-management-software#forum I think adding in the Apitronics detail is very exciting. I am working on a diagram and some mock screen shots to illustrate some possible interface ideas. Many of the soil health measures, like penetrometers, have digital readouts with integration to gps. The management data from crop treatments coupled with on the ground soil sampling with environmental monitoring(moisture, pH, temperature etc), aerial imagery and still images and spectral data combined would give a wealth of potential systems information both for management and research. I see this as the missing link for making imaging really useful too - see http://farmhack.org/tools/ifarm-imaging-agricultural-research-and-management In some sense, every farm is already a research farm, but an online data platform would enable the gathering of more data and facilitate sharing of this data to feed into decision support tools etc...

http://store.publiclaboratory.org/collections/spectrometry/products/foldable-mini-spectrometer It seems that lot of the work is getting these low cost spectrometers calibrated to plant tissue and soil sample analysis. The more robust version is only $40 - http://store.publiclaboratory.org/products/desktop-spectrometry-kit this is a great way in to start developing open data sharing that is being discussed in this tool wiki http://farmhack.org/tools/open-farm-data#forum to start to develop calibration standards and assign some meaning to data coming out of this kind of technology. There is also this sandboxed tool that tries to get at how to pull in this kind of data and make it useful to farmers and researchers alike. http://farmhack.org/tools/universal-adaptive-management-software#wiki Would be great to tie it into this kind of software too http://farmhack.org/tools/crop-planning-software

Hi Melissa, Welcome to Farm Hack! There is a lot of interest in using aircraft (and balloons and kites) to get aerial imagery for management and research purposes. There is an event in May in collaboration with public labs for the second year in a row focusing on how to best use open source imaging tools for agricultural purposes. More information can be found here http://farmhack.org/forums/ifarm-imaging-agricultural-research-and-management-field-day There is also a tool wiki to focus on the development and use of on farm imagery which I am sure you could add to as well - http://farmhack.org/tools/ifarm-imaging-agricultural-research-and-management Please feel free to edit and add to the wiki or starting some forum threads from the tool to kick off some more detailed discussion. I am especially interested in the NDVI and spectrometry potential for rapid assessment of crop performance. There are some researchers here at UNH who are looking at using the spectrometer to get early warning of pests in orchards, and I am particularly interested in gathering data similar to what a Spad meter asses percent cover, identify species composition, and generate estimates of crop height. I think that rapid data gathering is key to being able to implement adaptive farm management. Look forward to the dialog.