Dakota State grad student has award-winning smart ag project

MADISON, S.D. – Smart agriculture uses many forms of technology, and surprisingly, social media technology can also affect smart ag techniques.

Dakota State University graduate student Martinson Ofori studied the correlation between smart ag and social media, looking at the key drivers and challenges for smart ag through research on social media platforms.

His project, titled “Smart Agriculture Beyond Industry: Analyzing the Future of Agriculture Through Social Media Insights,” won first place out of 14 graduate projects at the Dakota State University annual Research Symposium in March 2019.

Because stakeholder expectations can be different from what smart ag innovations actually deliver, Ofori’s study looked at the public perception of smart ag and its perceived drivers and challenges through social media discourse.

Using eight years of posts from a variety of social media platforms, Ofori researched the data and discovered seven key drivers and challenges for smart ag: enabling technologies, data ownership and privacy, accountability and trust, energy and infrastructure, investment, job security, and climate change.

Ofori is a master’s degree student in computer science from Ghana. He is spending the summer as an intern with Agtegra Cooperative, a farmer-owned grain and agronomy cooperative in eastern North and South Dakota. His faculty research advisor is Dr. Omar El-Gayar.

For more information on this project, and to speak with Mr. Ofori or Dr. El-Gayar, contact Media Relations at DSU at the contact information above.

Who: Martinson Ofori, Dakota State graduate student

What: Research on smart agriculture won first place at the 2019 Research Symposium

Why: Demonstrates the key drivers and challenges for smart ag through research on social media platforms

Where: Dakota State University, Madison, S.D.