The Rural CS+Agriculture Alliance Research Practitioner Partnership: Experience Report

Computer science's multidisciplinary importance is becoming widely recognized, and few fields are seeing this change more rapidly than agriculture. One example is the advent of precision agriculture, which leverages advancements in technology to monitor crops and livestock and precisely apply nutrients, herbicides, etc. for the overall health of the crop. Such innovations will upset the status quo, creating an opportunity for greater equity in emerging Computer Science job markets. However, opportunities in Computer Science are not equitably distributed both socioeconomically and geographically, with most opportunities existing in wealthier metropolitan areas. We surveyed and interviewed K-12 agriculture teachers from Rural Title 1 schools in North Carolina and interviewed them about their experiences, visions of the future of agriculture, emerging AgTech economies, and difficulties they had adjusting to these shifting agricultural domains in their teaching. These teachers form the first phase of the Rural CS+Agriculture Alliance, which will focus on the creation of curriculum to support the integration of computer science topics into rural agriculture classrooms.