Location: Vegetable Research
Project Number: 6080-22000-032-017-I
Project Type: Interagency Reimbursable Agreement
Start Date: Mar 1, 2024
End Date: Feb 28, 2025
Objective:
To request a financial support to help us in organizing the 2024 Joint National Workshop on Sustainable Development of Controlled Environment Agriculture.
Approach:
This proposal is to request a financial support to help us in organizing the 2024 Joint National Workshop on Sustainable Development of Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA), expected to be held in Charleston, SC on June 18-21, 2024. This is a series of CEA meetings organized by the federal agencies starting from the 2018 inaugural meeting at USDA in Washington D.C. organized by the joint USDA-DOE-NASA committee. The second meeting was organized by the University of Arizona, in collaboration with USDA-DOE-NASA, and held at the Biosphere 2. The third meeting was held in 2021 as a virtual meeting due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Again, the three federal agencies (USDA, DOE and NASA), in collaboration with the University of Toledo hosted a virtual workshop “Multi-agency collaboration addressing challenges in controlled environment agriculture” on November 2-5, 2021. A workshop report was prepared and presented to the U.S. Congress. The fourth meeting was hosted by USDA, NASA and DOE and held as an in-person meeting on the campus of the University of Toledo on June 25-27, 2023 with over 120 registered participants, entitled “Workshop on advancing controlled environment agriculture on land and in space in the next 20 years”. Through the joint national efforts, this series of meetings has helped advancing the CEA industry in the U.S. During the meeting in Toledo, Ohio in 2023, it was decided to make this series of meetings as an annual event and the Charleston, SC was elected to host the fifth meeting in 2024. The USDA-ARS, U.S. Vegetable Laboratory in collaboration with Clemson University will serve as local organizers for the 2024 meeting in Charleston. The proposed 2024 joint nation workshop on CEA would further the federal government's mission, with the ultimate goal to help the struggling U.S. CEA industry recovery to be a stronger and sustainable food production system, complementing to the traditional field crop production.
We expect to have 100 participants to join this national meeting to be held in the Francis Marion Hotel in downtown Charleston. The first two days are planned for scientific presentations in 10 special topic sessions. The third day will be for educational field tour to visit the US Vegetable Laboratory research facilities, controlled environment agriculture and Clemson University's Coastal Research & Education Center, traditional crop production in a historical garden and a local CEA company engineering facilities of AmplifiedAg. The final day will be a half day in the morning to organize a team of scientists for a grant applications to federal agencies by identify the most critical technical challenges for CEA crop production, the federal funding opportunities and the needs for research. We will also discuss to develop objectives, approaches and anticipated outcomes for the proposed grant application.
