Skip to main content
ARS Home » Southeast Area » Booneville, Arkansas » Dale Bumpers Small Farms Research Center » Research » Research Project #443254

Research Project: Coupling Human and Machine Knowledge to Optimize Tribal Food Systems (Booneville)

Location: Dale Bumpers Small Farms Research Center

Project Number: 6020-21500-001-012-I
Project Type: Interagency Reimbursable Agreement

Start Date: Jul 1, 2022
End Date: Jun 30, 2026

Objective:
To develop tools and disseminate information to tribal producers for optimizing production of culturally important crops for combating climate change and food insecurity on U.S. Tribal reservations.

Approach:
An interdisciplinary team, including the developer of the digital soil mapping technology (US patent US No. 2016/0003792), remote sensing and other GPS enabled technology specialists, economists, and the director of the Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative to advance our understanding of interconnected soil health, crop growth, and nutrient/water cycling, all of which are linked to agricultural water availability across farm landscapes. By spurring water and nutrient smart agriculture, we will advance system innovation towards practices that promote healthy soils and water conservation on Tribal Lands. Overall project goals are to integrate multiple data sources ranging from Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK, or tacit knowledge) for use in digital agriculture platforms that ultimately promote water and nutrient-smart agriculture.