Many smallholder farmers in underresourced areas farm out of necessity to feed their families, often lacking access to information or knowledge about best practices. The challenges of a changing climate - such as crop stress, shorter growing seasons, declining soil fertility and reduced yields - have made farming even more difficult, leaving little room for error.
PlantVillage, a Penn State-based research lab, is working with smallholder farmers in Africa, Asia and the Americas to adapt to these climate-related challenges.
Founded in 2012 by David Hughes, the Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck Chair in Global Food Security and director of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)'s Innovation Lab on Current and Emerging Threats to Crops at the Penn State Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, PlantVillage describes itself as a "land-grant university in a phone." The app, powered by artificial intelligence, enables sharing of vital agricultural knowledge to and among the people who need it most.
To guide its expansion and commercial efforts, PlantVillage participated in the Invent Penn State U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) I-Corps regional short course, which helps researchers start on the path toward commercializing their innovations.
