Source: UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA submitted to NRP
REDUCING FIELD WORKER EXPOSURE TO PESTICIDES VIA AGRICULTURAL DATA CONNECTIVITY AND MOBILE APPS
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
COMPLETE
Funding Source
AFRI COMPETITIVE GRANT
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
1025493
Grant No.
2021-68008-34108
Cumulative Award Amt.
$299,529.00
Proposal No.
2020-05203
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Project Start Date
Apr 1, 2021
Project End Date
Mar 31, 2025
Grant Year
2021
Program Code
[A1701]- Critical Agricultural Research and Extension: CARE
Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA
(N/A)
LINCOLN,NE 68583
Performing Department
Biological Systems Engineering
Non Technical Summary
Pesticide application is a federally regulated and restricted practice primarily used within production agriculture. Regulations are enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which requires proper documentation of all pesticide use applications. In addition, the EPA requires accessibility to application information for all individuals at risk of pesticide exposure on the specific farm which the pesticides were applied. The current systems for documenting pesticide applications are antiquated, redundant, and a hinderance to time efficiency for service providers, production managers and pesticide applicators. When combined with pesticide toxicity levels we have a system full of areas that are susceptible to excessive error risks and can prove costly to workers safety. This issue may be solved with the development of a Farm Management Information System (FMIS), utilizing Mobile App technologies along with near real-time Agricultural Data Connectivity, that is dedicated to documenting, displaying, and reporting pesticide application use. Through the development of a new system that utilizes the advances seen within precision agriculture over the last decade, we stand to remove a current system that relies heavily upon personnel communication. This not only decreases the current human error factor, but provides the necessary information for worker safety in a significantly timelier fashion, and reduces the pesticide exposure risk our agricultural workers currently face daily.
Animal Health Component
100%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
100%
Developmental
(N/A)
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
40215992020100%
Knowledge Area
402 - Engineering Systems and Equipment;

Subject Of Investigation
1599 - Grain crops, general/other;

Field Of Science
2020 - Engineering;
Goals / Objectives
The long-term goal of this research is to mitigate the risks associated with the current pesticide use practices and reduce field-worker exposure to pesticides. We believe this can be achieved by improving documentation and reporting procedures, by leveraging now commonplace technologies such as smart phones, telemetry, web-based services, and GPS services, to decrease the amount of time needed for accurately conveying the specific pesticide application details. These include but are not limited to how and where the pesticide was used. The specific goal is to decrease the time gaps production agriculture systems currently experience between pesticide application and reporting of the specific application information necessary to agricultural worker protection.
Project Methods
Research Objective #1: Precision agriculture technologies have advanced at a significantly fast pace over the past decade, as demonstrated in (Cornhusker Economics Agricultural Economics) which shows that only 12% of surveyed Nebraska producers are not collecting information on their production facilities. Utilizing wireless data transfer technologies through cellular networks, will allow for information accessibility at a considerably faster rate. We will achieve this utilizing 4G, or soon to be 5G, cellular coverage obtained through Modular Telematics Gateways. These will connect directly to agricultural equipment providers cloud-based data storage services, which offer readily available access to necessary machine data application information. These cloud-based services, although previously proprietary, have made extreme progressive movements towards machine brand compatibility. This has been demonstrated by cooperation through data consortiums allowing for software development (https://developer.deere.com/content/welcome/offlineSDK.htm), as well as data sharing capabilities between manufacture cloud storage systems (https://www.deere.com/en/our-company/news-and-announcements/news-releases/2019/agriculture/2019nov05-dataconnect/). We will utilize these cloud-based services by developing mobile application software that integrates with John Deere's Operations Center platform, as well as a third-party database system providing vital safety information associated with individual pesticides. This will be accomplished through use of the Develop with Deere API's that are readily available as open-source software library packages. Combining these two information sources into a single platform will then allow us to document, visually display, and notify any field workers associated with a particular farm who are potentially at risk of exposure to pesticides. In order to determine what workers are at potential risk of exposure, the system will incorporate a database that will maintain all necessary field worker information. This will include who has received EPA WPS training and the farm each worker is associated with. The system will contain security access permission granting options, which will allow producers to extend account access to service providers who custom apply pesticides on their production facilities, as well as crop scouts who provide agronomic advising services. Mobile application platforms will consist of compatibility across ios, android, and windows based operating systems.Extension Objective #1:The extension objective will quantitatively evaluate the success of the overall system. It will assess all aspects of the system, including ease of use, reliability, added value, user perceived pesticide exposure risk reduction, pesticide application time in-efficiency reduction, and educational materials including system operation trainings. These will be achieved through a survey style evaluation and obtained from producers, applicators, and crop scouts/agronomists across the state of Nebraska. Results will be statistically analyzed and presented at extension events including pesticide applicator recertification, production management conferences, and the Nebraska Agriculture Technology Association (NEATA) Conference.In addition, training materials for use of the mobile app and associated online data repositories will be hosted on the Nebraska Digital Ag Teachable website (https://digitalag.teachable.com). This website allows for enrollment tracking in extension courses for follow up surveys. Preliminary surveys will be conducted for individuals registering for the coursework; nine month to one year follow up surveys will be conducted after each individual completes the course to assess true adoption and behavior change.

Progress 04/01/23 to 03/31/24

Outputs
Target Audience:This project period we began sharing the output of the project with project advisory group members, gaining feedback on the current status of the platform. In addition, the project was shared during the 2024 International Conference on Precision Agriculture in Manhattan, Kansas during an oral presentation attended by over 50 researchers and industry professionals working in our field. We received a good amount of positive feedback about the project from this group as well. Changes/Problems:We have not had any major barriers since the graduate student took over programming elements of the project from our senior design team. The only unanticipated setback has been the lack of data connectivity offerings from two machinery manufacturers (AGCO, CNHi)...however the system has been succesfully deployed for users of Deere & Company agricultural equipment which represents the vast majority of field equipment in the U.S. We believe that as we demonstrate the applicability of this tool more broadly, we will gain more interest from chemical companies due to their liability with exposure to chemical during agricultural operations! What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The graduate student has completed the web application (software) prototype and has been beta-testing the system. The student (software engineer) has gained a great deal of experience in agricultural datasets and has been able to envision other tools that could be created using similar datasets. Toward the end of this reporting period, a team of senior design students from the school of computing completed their portion of the project and gained valuable insights into how agricultural datasets are gathered and utilized in our industry. All of these students now have a better understanding of agricultural data and will be able to better develop and deploy new analytical systems for improving digital agricultural tools in the future. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?While we have not yet broadly shared the output from the project, it has been shared with a small advisory group of producers to gather feedback and help with future direction. The graduate student recently shared the project status during an oral presentation at the 2024 International Conference on Precision Agriculture to a group of over 50 acadmic and industry professionals. The feedback was very positive on this novel method for utilizing agricultural datasets to improve operational/reporting efficiency from agricutural operations! What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Our final step will be putting the we app in the hands of a few producers for final beta testing in March of 2025. We will provide them with access to the application, the user manual and gather feedback from them focusing on the user friendliness of the tool as we prepare the final deployment. We will also fully deploy the system in our research farms across the Eastern Nebraska Research Extension & Education Center farms such that we can continue to demonstrate its usefulness via Extension programming.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? We completed the deployment of the software in a cloud environment and have completed beta testing. All web-based APIs are now connected to bring the datasets together and displaying them for users to observe in near real-time. We have shifted the system from a 'sandbox' web environment to a development platform such that it could be accessed by a broader group of users in the near future. The graduate student has completed the user manual for the system such that others could successfully download and connect to the app in the future.

Publications


    Progress 04/01/22 to 03/31/23

    Outputs
    Target Audience:The prototype software has been developed and tested internally to UNL farm management personnel with successful results. We were slightly delayed in hiring a graduate student with appropriate skills in software engineering (a student joined in January, 2023 to complete this work). We expect to begin engaging external audiences this year to share the platform and begin beta testing with those individuals as part of the project. Changes/Problems:The only major problem since the last progress report was the delay in finding a graduate student with sufficient skills in programming to finalize the development of the software application. This did cause a delay (approximately 9 months) from when we were hoping to have this student begin work on the project...an individual has since started (January, 2023) and is making great progress. We may request a no-cost extension due to this delay to allow us to evaulate the tool in the early 2024 growing season (current end date is March, 2024) to provide an evaluation under actual conditions with the growers/crop consultants during that time. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?We were able to recently hire a graduate student with software engineering skills to help move the software development process forward and we interacted with a computer science undergraduate senior design team to help with some additional programming needs in 2022-2023. The results has been increased knowledge for these 7 students regarind agricultural data applications. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Due to potential intellectual property issues, we have not yet reported the development of this tool externally, but will do so pending the review by our commercialization office. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?With the graduate student now on board (started Jan '23), we will be working to complete the software such that we can add external (to UNL) users to the system for field testing with local producers. Training materials will be provided to those producers/crop scouts to gauge their ability to use the software with minimal instruction from our team. We will evaluate the training materials effectiveness and general useability by surveying those individuals.

    Impacts
    What was accomplished under these goals? The prototype software has been fully developed and deployed on a cloud based system and is able to access cloudbased geospatial pesticide application records communicated from the field via telemetry systems on the agricultural field equipment. The student has demonstrated access to these data in near real-time by connected users (e.g., crop scouts) that can connect via a web interface linked accounts. We have also accessed web-based spray labels for incorporating the re-entry interval (REI) data into the application seamlessly. The system has been tested and the graduate student is updating all software into the mobile application environment for connected user access. We have tested the system internally at the UNL research farm near Mead, NE and the system appears to be working properly. The system successfully displays active REI areas with recently sprayed fields.

    Publications


      Progress 04/01/21 to 03/31/22

      Outputs
      Target Audience:To date, we have not reached any external audiences as proposed in the research of extension components of the project. In terms of research audience, we plan to begin demonstrating the software in the coming reporting period. Likewise for the extension objective, we will begin development of the training materials with the plan to begin distributing these materials in the next reporting period as well (as we being beta testing with producers). Changes/Problems:We have only encountered minor delays in the coding necessary to complete the beta version of the software platform. We may request a rebudget to allow a team of students from our School of Computing to help with completing these updates to the proof of concept platform the student has currently developed. We will know if this is necessary within the next 3-4 weeks. We were hoping to recruit a graduate student to begin the extension portion of this project in Jan '22; however a suitable student was not found. We continue to recruit with the hope of finding a suitable candidate in May '22 at the beginning of the summer. I don't believe this will be a major hindrance to the project. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Nothing Reported How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?No results have been disseminated to date; however we plan to share advancements in professional societies during the next reporting period. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?The next reporting period will complete the development phase of the software platform and we will progress into the extension phase of the project. We will create training materials and begin beta testing the product with external clientele where we will assess the effectiveness of the tool and the learning materials. We will use these to complete a final revision of the product and training materials.

      Impacts
      What was accomplished under these goals? To date, the student working on this effort has completed 95% of the software development for integrating pesticide application data for use by connected parties to view this information in near real-time. The software is able to access cloud-based geospatial pesticide application records communicated from the field via telemetry systems on the agricultural field equipment. The student has demonstrated access to these data in near real-time by connected users (e.g., crop scouts) that can connect via a web interface linked accounts. We are initiating the second phase of devleopment as the tool is moved to a mobile application environment for connected user access which will be completed within the next reporting period.

      Publications