The Center for Applied Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture will be built at the Gulf Coast Research and Education Center, which is run by the University of Florida. Nathan Boyd is the center's associate director.
"Right now, most of that work is done by hand, from planting to managing to harvesting," he said. "The problem with that is, we just don't have a workforce that wants to do that in Florida, and that's a really important issue. And to compete in a global marketplace, the solution is we have to automate it."
He said AI can help farmers automate their growing, harvesting and weeding of their fields.
"What AI allows us to do is it allows us to automate things that was never possible to do in the past," Boyd said. "And the goal is to try to make specialty crop farms in Florida more efficient and more effective at growing food."
One example is AI targeting weeds for removal. So instead of spraying a whole field, farmers can target their spraying and reduce the amount of pesticides released into the environment. He says they'll focus on crops grown locally, including strawberries, tomatoes and blackberries.
Boyd said there will be side benefits to the coming AI revolution.
"An unexpected side benefit of bringing AI into agriculture is the farming population is getting older," he said. "And all of a sudden you have a whole new generation that's very interested because of the technology."
The groundbreaking is part of a day-long celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Wimauma center. It's located at 1462 County Road 672.
The groundbreaking is at noon, and guests will start speaking about the AI center at 10:30 a.m. Among the guests expected to speak are:
- Scott Angle, UF senior vice president for agriculture and natural resources and leader of the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS).
- UF Interim Provost Joe Glover.
- State Rep. Lawrence McClure.
- U.S. Rep. Kat Cammack.
