Some of the world’s best minds that are focused on profitable and sustainable livestock production attended and presented at the recent Second U.S. Precision Livestock Farming Conference. Hosted by University of Tennessee AgResearch, the May 21-24 event at the UT Conference Center in Knoxville attracted 219 attendees representing 22 countries and 32 U.S. states. Participants included academics, representatives of government agencies and allied industries as well as producers. The conference had a central theme of “Field Application of PLF Technologies” and academic presentations along with two industry and producer panels included interactive dialogues among the attendees about ways to increase field adoption of PLF technologies.
More than 125 scientific papers were published in the conference proceedings, and twenty of those will be published in an upcoming special edition of the international journal Animals.
USDA’s National Institute for Food and Agriculture (NIFA) awarded the event a conference-strengthening grant to sponsor a mentoring luncheon for young professionals and early career scientists, attendance scholarships for minority producers from across the U.S., and attendance scholarships for faculty and extension educators from minority-serving institutions. The NIFA grant will also cover the publication costs for papers that were selected for inclusion in the special edition of Animals and which were also written by educators and scientists from minority-serving institutions.
