USDA recently posted a story on a “first of its kind” camp for teens in DC to work with agriculture related open data to create cool apps. In the last few months I have seen agriculture, especially precision ag (which is almost like saying color TV) get more attention. It’s getting attention because it requires more broadband that most rural areas have. And because since the bird flu scare tracing food products has become a top priority and precision ag is key to the solution. (Better tracking/tracing products is just one reason farmers need better broadband.)

Also I was struck at Farmfest by the discussion related to agriculture education. Precision ag requires a tremendous amount of tech skills. One way to build ag/IT skills is to get students who are likely to consider farming interested in technology. Another way is to introduce kids who are interested in technology to the opportunities in precision ag. An app camp or heckfast is a perfect opportunity. It’s also a good opportunity for kids (and adults) to learn about how open data can be manipulated to create tools and information that can help us improve on how we do things.

Here are a list of the open data sets with links to the apps they created…

This special camp is the first of its kind in the United States specifically focused on Open Data and Agriculture. The participants delivered presentations based on the following data sets:

1) Food Consumption and Nutrient Intakes

http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-consumption-and-nutrient-intakes.aspx

2) Price Spreads from Farm to Consumer

http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/price-spreads-from-farm-to-consumer.aspx

3) Food Environment Atlas

http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-environment-atlas/.aspx

4) US Bioenergy Statistics

http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/us-bioenergy-statistics.aspx

5) Major Land Uses

http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/major-land-uses.aspx

6) Super Tracker and Other Tools

http://catalog.data.gov/dataset/meat-poultry-and-egg-inspection-directory-by-establishment-name/resource/9d2d9f2b-f46c-4dd5-9621-8429cbead22f

7) FoodKeeper

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/usda-foodkeeper/id978186100?mt=8

Willmar is hosting a Hack in September. Maybe this will spur some ideas for that event – or even better spur some folks to attend to dive deeper into precision ag opportunities at the event.