Students behind “FarmSmart” hope to use artificial intelligence as accessible intelligence | News

Three LSU students won the $20,000 first place reward in the Terrel Brown Venture Challenge with their new project, “FarmSmart.”

It uses a virtual assistant trained on information from LSU agricultural research, around three thousand pesticide and herbicide labels, and federal regulations.

The team members behind it are Colin Raby, Julius Pallotta, and Grant Muslow. They aim to help smaller and local farms by giving them a means to easily learn about an unrecognized plant and how to manage it.

FarmSmart originated when the students were approached with a story about a farmer who recently took over the family farm and had to deal with weeds he didn’t know about. 

That farmer needed to figure out what type of weed plant it was, find the correct pesticide, how to get or create the pesticide, and the proper method for using the pesticide. Colin Raby shared how FarmSmart could help streamline a lot of this work.

“If we can train a virtual expert to walk a farmer through every step of that process, and just tell them the best path forward, then that would be a great asset to the agricultural community.”

The students entered the J. Terrel Brown Venture Challenge and succeeded in impressing the judges. Fahimeh Abbasi, the Director of LSU Entrepreneurship, said that the winners in the competition were chosen because of certain factors.

“It’s not only about their presentation, but also about the potential of that business,” Abbasi said, “It’s been nice to see how transformative this program is for LSU students.”

After receiving financial resources from the program, Muslow says the team will use the $20,000 to continue building the app and preparing the virtual expert. 

The team of students also wanted to make sure the artificial intelligence wasn’t providing fake information, so if it is asked a question that’s not recognized or it doesn’t knows the answer to, it will simply reply that it doesn’t know.

Muslow believes that agriculture consultants will still be important even for people using FarmSmart, because it is wise to have a real expert look over details and answer other more specific questions. 

“Our vision, our goal…is to bridge the gap between all of the accessible information that’s out there,” Raby said. “And turn that into accessible intelligence for both farmers and gardeners alike, so everyone can farm smart.” 

The app is planned to release by the end of this summer.