By Amy Burtch
When Brad Lewis landed at NC State University, he saw something within the N.C. Plant Sciences Initiative that he did not expect to see.
“I saw different groups working together collaboratively, and it was a huge breath of fresh air,” says Lewis, the program manager for the N.C. Agricultural Analytics Platform. This makes sense as the N.C. Plant Sciences Initiative (N.C. PSI) is one of the university’s leading interdisciplinary research units.
Agriculture and agribusiness is a $100+ billion industry in the state of North Carolina. Therefore, it’s important to develop solutions for storing, analyzing and maintaining large-scale datasets to support stakeholders and improve agricultural systems in the state.
Enter the N.C. Ag Analytics Platform.
With funds appropriated by the North Carolina General Assembly, the platform is a N.C. PSI and N.C. Food Animal Initiative project operated in partnership with North Carolina A&T University and data and AI company, SAS.
The platform aims to support the management and utilization of data to sustain growth, innovation and data-driven decision-making within the agricultural industry in North Carolina.
Supporting Agricultural Research
Ag Analytics Platform Program Manager Brad Lewis was brought on in the fall of 2024 to look holistically across the platform’s projects and find synergies in the data and outcomes being created by the platform. This position unites his experience in both education and technology, following 20 years at IBM.
The platform is in its third budget year, with NC State and NC A&T granted $1 million each. It started with simple touchpoints, moved into joint workshops and training sessions, and has since morphed into consultation and steady collaboration.
NC State faculty are invited to submit project proposals to the platform. Currently, there are seven active projects, with four projects in either the completed or maintenance phase. The platform supports projects using a combination of on-premises and cloud-based analytics. It can leverage the AI and analytics platform, SAS Viya, when appropriate, working closely with SAS experts to accelerate the development of data analytics solutions.
“The Ag Analytics team supports and supplements,” Lewis says. “We come alongside the research teams to help in any way we can.”
Power of Data
Machine learning is one of the benefits of working with SAS Viya, Lewis explains. The software can build predictive models, which help foresee a multitude of agricultural situations. Beyond support from SAS, the platform provides automated data collection from sensors, metadata tracking and deployment of web-enabled dashboards.
Examples of platform projects include:
- BeanPACK is an agronomic soybean decision support tool that assists farmers with planting and harvesting dates.
- Moth trap sensors, used to track corn earworm moths, were improved using cellphone technology; data is now captured in batches to avoid data loss.
- RoboNema is a project in collaboration with the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services that will deploy machine-learning models to identify nematodes (a worm-like pest) through a mechanized microscope, improving a previously laborious process.
Impact of Weather
In February 2025, Center for Environmental Farming Systems Director Michelle Schroeder-Moreno initiated her platform research project, “Understanding the Long-Term Impacts of Weather and Sustainable Agricultural Systems.” She wants to answer the question: How do farming practices and climate impact crop yields and soil health?
“The overall goal is to understand, over the long-term, how farming systems — whether organic, conventional, forestry, crop animal rotation or land released from agriculture — impact crop yields, as well as the soil fertility, structure and biological systems over time,” Schroeder-Moreno says.
Source : ncsu.edu