From computer science to animal science, students attending the Transdisciplinary Experiential Learning Summer Workshop learned how precision agriculture can improve swine production and animal production at large.
Over the summer summer, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University’s College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences (CAES) and North Carolina State University teamed up to provide undergraduates from a variety of disciplines a hands-on look at the ways precision livestock farming and artificial intelligence can create better living conditions for pigs.
Held at N.C. A&T’s University Farm Pavilion, the workshop was part of the USDA-funded Proactive Pig Production (P3) project, a collaboration between A&T, NCSU and Iowa University.
“The P3 program focuses on looking at problems that we need to solve for the swine industry using novel technologies associated with AI,” Mulumbet Worku, professor of animal sciences and biotechnologies in the CAES Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Design, says in a release. “This animal behavior may be relevant to us and our problem-solving solutions. In animal science, you’re looking at animal behavior; in bioengineering, we’re looking at how animals respond.”
Student participants learned core concepts in digital agriculture from CAES and NCSU faculty and graduate speakers through workshop sessions, a tour of the university farm and hands-on activities such as assembling a programmable logic controller, a device used to help regulate temperature in swine housing.
“The animal experiences a lot of heat stress due to heat waves and weather moving into the southeastern area,” Lingjuan Wang Li, William Neal Reynolds Distinguished University Professor at N.C. State, says in a release. “We, as a team, believe that the animal is the best sensor. When they are under distress, or cold stress or heat stress, they will be able to show us. With AI, the technology is there to observe and translate that into action.”
The workshop’s transdisciplinary approach helps promote further career opportunities for students regardless of their major, Worku says.
“The purpose meets a need in the industry,” Worku adds. “We had students from animal science, from agribusiness and economics, Ph.Ds., undergraduate students, graduate students. We had students who were in psychology, the arts, non-traditional areas. We wanted the students to see how we are interacting together to solve a problem using precision livestock approaches.”
Brianna Thorpe, a psychology student at A&T, says that as a child, she aspired to become a veterinarian.
“This experience has taught me a lot about agriculture and about using innovative technologies to broaden our perspectives on animal culture and animal science,” Thorpe says. “This is not my major, but ... it’s still important to know what we’re consuming and to be able to take care of the animals we have here, of climate change and the environmental factors that go into animals’ reactions.”
