CC* Regional Networking: Regional Collaboration - Precision Agriculture - Yuma AZ

Yuma agriculture uses 10,000 acres of irrigated farmland, water diverted from the Colorado River, and a year-round growing season to produce over 90% of North America’s winter vegetables. The use of information technologies in farming and agribusiness is growing and expanding the necessary discovery to improve yields and align production with changing environmental conditions. The use of field data collected, monitored, and analyzed allows producers to plan and assess crop stability and growth. The expansion of cyberinfrastructure (CI) systems and resources enables modern farming to collect, analyze, and share soil, crop, and environmental data. The CC* Regional Network project delivers high speed external connectivity, expands wireless networks and internet of things (IOT) systems to research farms in one of the most important agricultural communities in the country. The introduction of specialized and novel networking in new collaborations with higher education research in the region improves the opportunity to plan and implement broadband and networking aligned with the science of agriculture. The use of technology to improve crop yields and minimize natural resource impacts, or precision agriculture, is a necessary step forward that requires the deployment of cyberinfrastructure on research farms, in rural communities, and in an extended collaboration between higher education, the Yuma agricultural research community with Yuma broadband providers and farmers. The project enables participation and informs regional cyberinfrastructure capacity building by Arizona’s research and education network, the Sun Corridor Network (SCN), Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona as a research service facilitator in this community. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.