In this panel-style Speaker Series event, we heard from a diverse set of industry leaders — non-profit, public sector, startup, and big tech — all working with AI in the Ag space. Each discussed the various ways they are working to improve food systems and the career opportunities available in their organizations.

Rikin Gandhi told his story of dreaming to be an astronaut — and following that dream all the way through a master's degree in aeronautical engineering from MIT — before falling into an opportunity that led him to his true hero, the Indian small farmer. Now he runs Digital Green, an organization that helps small farmers in multiple countries through the use of LLMs.

Gabe Youtsey explained the work that UC-ANR and The VINE are doing around innovation for food and agriculture, and how Rikin's work in India can be adapted to help California farmers.

With a growing population, decreasing areas of arable land, increasing food costs, and poor diets causing numerous health issues, we are facing a global food crisis. California is on the leading edge of embracing artificial intelligence and pairing it with biotech applications.

Karl Schiller talked about how his company, Pheronym, is using pheromones to control the behavior of tiny roundworms called nematodes. Certain species of these worms invade the roots of plants, severely impacting plant health and crop yield, while beneficial nematodes help control other small pests.

One product is being developed to repel harmful nemotodes away from plant roots, while another conditions beneficial nemotodes to be even more effective. Pheronym's non-toxic solutions can ultimately lead to a reduction in the use of pesticides.

Finally, Ranveer Chandra joined us remotely to answer the question, "What is Microsoft doing working in agriculture and food?" It may not seem like a natural fit, but Ranveer has been leading this effort for the past ten years. His vision is to bring the best of technology to agriculture to help produce more food, and more nutritious food, for our growing population.

If every entity in the food-value chain began to use a data-driven agrifood system, and then they were integrated and shared data, we would create new efficiencies. Microsoft is building the tech backbone to get there with a product called Azure Data Manager for Agriculture. In addition, they have created 65 AI workflows that are publicly available for use.

Microsoft is also bringing its AI chatbot, Copilot, to farmers. Beginning with a pilot project in Washington state, they used farm data to train LLMs to provide data-driven guidance to farmers. The newest efforts use a multi-model AI including Small Language Models and image processing to democratize data and AI driven agriculture.

Each speaker also talked about the variety of career opportunities in their domains, from agricultural consultants and irrigation advisors to PhD research associates and interdisciplinary AI specialists to undergraduate and graduate internships.

OUR SPEAKERS

Rikin Gandhi, CEO of Digital Green

Gabriel Youtsey, Chief Innovation Officer at UC ANR

Karl Cameron Schiller, co-founder, COO of Pheronym

Ranveer Chandra, Managing Director, Research for Industry, Microsoft