URBANA, Ill. — Identifying on-farm needs to increase efficiency, safety, practicality, and overall profitability is where ideas for adapting technology begin. From there, advancing technology for productivity and sustainability seems to be more within reach in a changing agricultural landscape. 

The I-FARM University Learning Series webinars help farmers, researchers, industry professionals, and anyone in agriculture explore today’s agricultural technologies for large-scale operations to adaptations for small hobby farms. 

The series runs monthly on upcoming dates, including:

• Aug. 8: Enhancing Farm Connectivity
• Sept. 12: Farm Robotics
• Oct. 10: Economics of Adopting Weeding Robots
• Nov. 14: Smart Grazing with Livestock Management
• Dec. 12: Technology Adoption for Small Farms

Topics featured throughout the series sessions include communication between farm equipment, sensors and management systems, satellites, robotics for crops and livestock management, and economics around adopting technology in farming operations. 

Experts from their respective fields lead each session, provide economic insights, and share practical knowledge relevant to today’s farming operations. Sessions will begin at 11 a.m. on the second Thursday of the month through December. Learn more about the series and register at go.illinois.edu/IFARM2024.

I-FARM, or Illinois Farming and Regenerative Management, is a collaboration grant-funded 80-acre agricultural testbed where commodity crops, cover crops, and livestock are farmed using synergistic and sustainable practices. 

The free series is co-sponsored by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Center for Digital Agriculture, Agricultural Safety & Health Program, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, farmdoc, and University of Illinois Extension.

If you need a reasonable accommodation to participate in this program, contact Jim Baltz at jhbaltz@illinois.edu or by phone at 217-333-8276. Early requests are strongly encouraged to allow sufficient time to meet access needs.

SOURCE: Salah Issa, assistant professor and Extension specialist in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, College of ACES.

WRITER: Jenna Braasch, media communications coordinator, Illinois Extension

About I-FARM: I-FARM is an 80-acre agricultural testbed located on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus, where commodity crops, cover crops, and livestock are farmed using synergistic and sustainable practices. The Farm of the Future research project is a collaboration between National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment, and the Center for Digital Agriculture.