AI in Agriculture Conference Explores the Future of Farming

Early in their careers, Chris Reberg-Horton, a professor in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences at NC State University, and Steven Mirsky, director of digital agriculture for the U.S Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service, became frustrated by how hard it was to turn research on crop and soil management into something more tangible for farmers and growers. They turned to technology for help.

Two decades and numerous computer vision projects later, the pair and their teams launched the Ag Image Repository (AgIR) in 2025. Powered in conjunction with artificial intelligence, AgIR is a growing collection of 1.5 million high-quality photographs of plants and associated data collected at different stages of growth. They envision the repository as the building blocks for a variety of digital agriculture tools.

“The idea for us was how can we create a public open-access resource of high quality, curated images that are annotated that anybody can use to build models and their own programs,” Reberg-Horton, director of the N.C. Plant Sciences Initiative’s Resilient Agricultural Systems Platform, told attendees at the 2026 AI in Agriculture Conference in Raleigh.

The NC State-hosted conference, March 31-April 2, brought together more than 460 academics, students, researchers, extension professionals and industry leaders from across the country to explore how AI is reshaping the future of agriculture.

The conference’s theme — Advancing Artificial Intelligence and Data-Driven Innovations for Resilient and Competitive Agricultural Systems — emphasized how integrative, AI-enabled solutions can enhance productivity, profitability and environmental stewardship across crop, livestock and supply-chain domains.

“Bringing national expertise to this conference gives North Carolina farmers, Extension agents, researchers and ag technology companies direct exposure to new ideas and possibilities around AI,” said Daniela Jones, conference lead and director of agricultural analytics for NC State’s Data Science and AI Academy.

And that coalescence of AI experts focused on digital and precision agriculture tools builds on the research and innovation of NC State’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

“There’s a wonderful push here at NC State to scale AI and ag tech as quickly as we possibly can,” CALS Dean Garey Fox said during his welcome remarks. “In fact, I think there’s a goal, not just NC State’s goal, but I think it’s a goal of the Research Triangle Park area to scale ag tech faster than any other part of the country.”

CALS has focused in recent years on creating new faculty positions dedicated to AI, upgrading equipment and improving infrastructure to support research and technology related to digital agriculture. Equally important, Fox said, is the innovation in science.

“We have really focused heavily on this idea of what I would call science-integrated AI,” Fox said. “And not just using AI as a computational tool, but learning how we can use AI to help inform the mechanisms and the processes underlying our biological systems.”

Conference participants attended a variety of workshops on different aspects of AI tools and research. The session Hands-On AI for Extension provided tutorials on how Extension agents can use tools like Gemini, ChatGPT and Notebook LM with prompt engineering to create content such as reports, briefing documents, infographics, data tables and videos.

“I think these are tools that can really help streamline a lot of what Extension agents are already doing,” said David Suchoff, an NC State faculty member and director of the N.C PSI’s Extension Outreach and Engagement Platform. “It allows them to focus more on the human aspect of their job — interactions with their stakeholders, building trust, problem solving — but then utilizing AI to really be more efficient.”

Faculty and students from dozens of universities presented more than 130 research posters ranging from AI systems for livestock management to digital tools for detecting plant diseases.

Stephen Afrifa, a graduate student in NC State’s Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, presented a poster on a hybrid attention-based network for broiler breeder feather condition scoring. He said exploring the various research projects and attending workshops during the conference helped broaden his view of the future of agriculture.

“Participating in the AI in Agriculture Conference has broadened my perspective on how data-driven models can move beyond research into real-world farming applications,” Afrifa said. “It highlighted how integrating diverse data sources can improve poultry health monitoring, enable early detection of issues, and support more precise, efficient, and sustainable farming practices.”

Zach Marston, a conference keynote speaker and AI manager at agriculture technology company Syngenta, offered practical advice for how to take research projects from the lab to the farm: “Go talk to the grower, see if your research makes sense to them. See if this is something they really want to have on their farm that they would use. This is how you ensure you start making early decisions that translate to a real product being used in the field.”