Forest Farming Is Growing in Popularity

Aug 28, 2023

By Jeanine Davis

Forest farming is gaining in popularity across the nation. There has been a small number of university researchers and extension personnel working with farmers and the industry on growing native woodland plants for decades. But it has only been quite recently that more people, including institutions, non-profits and consumers, have become interested in the practice of cultivating forest botanicals. Here is a new article by Daniel Watson published in Ambrook Research that describes the practice and highlights a western NC forest farmer and the Appalachian Beginning Forest Farmer Coalition that our program is so engaged in:

Source : ncsu.edu

Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.