The Center for Digital Agriculture (CDA) was honored to participate in the 2025 Farm Progress Show this August. Hosted in Decatur, Ill., farmers, growers, researchers, scientists, industry leaders, and the public came to explore the latest innovations in agricultural technology. From press conferences and field demonstrations to engaging conversations at the exhibitor tent, CDA faculty, affiliates, and students highlighted how digital tools and artificial intelligence are transforming farming practices for the future.

Engaging the Public in Digital Ag

Throughout the three-day event, CDA affiliates shared research insights in robotics, sensing, AI, and data-driven crop management. The ACES tent was full of tables and exhibits from all over the college. CDA was one of the exhibitors in the tent, allowing visitors the opportunity to interact directly with CDA affiliates and graduate students, learning how research translates into tools and applications that farmers and growers can utilize in their daily operations.

Dennis Bowman, Extension Digital Agriculture Specialist with Illinois Extension in the College of ACES, focused his activities inside the ACES Tent, where he shared information about CDA, AIFARMS, the Crop Wizard, and the SCAPES grant Agrivoltaics game. He also supported the outdoor demos, coordinated with colleagues, and stepped in to answer specific attendee questions. For Bowman, a highlight of the show was participating in the AI AgriBench panel discussion with Todd Gleason.

“The Farm Progress Show is an amazing opportunity to reach a huge multigenerational agricultural audience. This year’s perfect weather really brought out the crowds,” said Bowman.

Salah Issa, Assistant Professor in Agricultural and Biological Engineering, utilized virtual reality to showcase both the iFARM and the Farm of the Future, as well as innovative safety tools. One highlight was a one-minute, 360-degree movie that let participants see how a robot dog could herd cattle from the dog’s perspective—complete with laughter when the camera was “kicked off” and the dog returned searching for it. Issa also demonstrated a VR educational game developed with Parkland College and Purdue University, teaching participants how to inspect a truck for safe driving.

“Virtual reality is a great tool to showcase technologies and bring the farm directly to the participant,” said Issa.

Sunoj Shajahan, Assistant Professor in Agricultural and Biological Engineering, led a robotics and drone display that drew nearly 200 visitors to the ACES tent. Supported by graduate students Sandesh Poudel (PhD) and Seth Van Hoveln (MS), the team engaged attendees of all ages—from children eager to pet the robot dog to farmers interested in adapting a sprayer drone for their own operations. New this year was the mechanical weeding robot for horseradish, sparking questions about how its Amiga-based platform might be adapted for tasks like mowing or tillage.

“The FPS event brought precision ag to life. I just wish more ACES students had a chance to visit this event. It was a perfect extension of what we teach in digital ag programs at UIUC, and the conversations sparked real ideas for future tech,” said Shajahan.

Graduate Research Assistant and PhD student Sandesh Poudel brought a student perspective to the event, sharing the lab’s site-specific weeding robot alongside drone sprayers, a robotic dog, and a cover-cropping robot. He enjoyed fielding questions from a wide range of participants—from FFA students to industry representatives—about how the Amiga robot differentiates between crops and weeds and uses actuators to mechanically remove weeds. For Poudel, unexpected conversations, such as one visitor asking whether drones could be adapted to search for morel mushrooms, underscored how public engagement can spark fresh research ideas.

“It was my first time participating in the Farm Progress Show, and I had not imagined it would be such a large-scale event. I was truly amazed at how FPS brought together the wide range of industries, universities, companies, and farmers in one place. I believe such events can even spark new innovations and plant seeds of hope for solving critical challenges,” said Poudel.

Graduate Research Assistant and MS student Seth Van Hoveln also played a key role in demonstrating technologies and engaging visitors by showcasing drones used in scouting and spraying, as well as the site-specific weeding robot, the autonomous cover crop seeder, and the robot dog. Van Hoveln enjoyed engaging with visitors and explaining how these technologies could reshape farming practices. The live demonstrations proved especially effective, stopping people in their tracks and creating opportunities for meaningful conversations.

Van Hoveln noted that the experience was rewarding not only for the chance to share advancements in digital agriculture but also for the opportunity to learn from visitors. Speaking with farmers and attendees from around the world provided new insights into how agriculture is practiced in different regions and the challenges that lie ahead.

AI AgriBench Press Conference

A key highlight was the AI AgriBench press conference, where members of the AI AgriBench Consortium, a collaborative initiative led by CDA, outlined their mission to build trust and confidence in AI advisory services for digital crop production. The panel featured voices from academia, industry, and extension, emphasizing the importance of benchmarking tools to ensure that AI provides accurate and reliable recommendations.

What We Shared

During a press conference, Tami Craig Schilling (independent advisor and moderator) joined her fellow benchmarking consortium organizers, Vikram Adve (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Ryan Gilbert (Bayer), Brad Van De Woestyne (John Deere), and John Reid (Center for Digital Agriculture) to talk about the opportunities and challenges of AI in agriculture. Highlights include 

• An overview of the AI AgriBench consortium, including info about membership and goals, which focus on building trust and accuracy. A clear message was conveyed: AI AgriBench is a growing collaboration, and the door is open for more organizations to join.
• Opportunities for generative AI to transform agriculture are significant, with benchmarks playing a crucial role in this process. These benchmarks serve as guardrails to help identify biases and accuracy gaps in AI advisory tools, while also acting as yardsticks to motivate and measure progress in technology.
• Panelists discussed how the consortium differs from other AI efforts in agriculture due to its emphasis on expert-reviewed datasets and transparency. They reinforced the importance of benchmarks in building trust and gaining adoption of Gen AI services among growers and other members of the agricultural community.
• Q&A sessions covered real-world topics, ranging from data privacy to the evolution of benchmarks as AI tools advance. 

In Conversation with Todd Gleason

Following the press conference, Tami and Vikram sat down with Todd Gleason (WILL Radio & Illinois Extension) in the University of Illinois ACES tent for a more in-depth discussion. 

• The duo discussed the relationship across the University of Illinois, the Center for Digital Agriculture, the CropWizard research project, and the founding organizations of AI AgriBench, which focuses on GenAI for Agriculture, demonstrating how years of collaborative work laid the foundation for this consortium.
• Vikram Adve described how early collaboration led to the launch of the AI AgriBench consortium, emphasizing the importance of benchmarking in maintaining transparency and creating consistent performance measures that guide researchers and industry product developers. He also described the critical ways in which Gen AI could impact the practice of agriculture for both commercial producers and smallholder farmers. 
• To deliver on the mission of building trust and confidence in AI advisory services for agriculture, an open invitation was issued for organizations of all kinds to join the consortium and for agronomists to assist in evaluating questions and answers.