4D Farm

The Digital, Data-Driven Demonstration Farm

Updates: Research

Research

Research Update: CottonBot – An AI-Driven Cotton Farming Assistant Using Agentic LLM-RAG

Sarah Beth Thompson April 16, 2026

Graphic of databse workflow. The graphic shows that "data sources" (IoT: soil & weather, rover: image & point cloud, drone: imagery data, manual: height, boll count. nodes count, etc.) are ingested into a box called "data loader (JMeter Scripts)." The data then is inserted into both "Database (MongoDB) and "Database (Neo4j)." The data goes through "workload test" and goes into a single "performance testing (JMeter: CRUD, Queries)." The data then goes through "collect results" into "Metric collection (CPU, RAM, response time)." The save logs go into "Result storage (CSV)" and are analyzed into "visualization & analysis."

Research

Research Update: Cotton Data Management

Michaela Lubbers September 8, 2025

Screenshot of the Cotton Devs interactive dashboard found at https://shiny.agmanager.info/cottonBotsDev

Research

Research Update: Socio-economics

Michaela Lubbers August 18, 2025

Photo of the Lab test stand for poultry litter metering system. There is a lrage black hopper, connected to a motor on the left and a digital read-out on the right.

Research

Research Update: Metered Poultry Litter Injection

Michaela Lubbers July 7, 2025

Image of a ranger 4x4 off-roading vehicle with a box labeled "Gasmet: in the back. The box is connected via thin tubes to a small, foil-wrapped dome, about a foot in diameter. The done is sitting on the ground.

Research

Research Update: Assessing and Predicting Pasture GHG Emissions

Michaela Lubbers June 2, 2025

Image of plants in an agricultural field, taken from approximately head-high, with four colors of small boxes superimposed over the plants.

Research

Research Update: Big Data Pipeline

Michaela Lubbers May 1, 2025

Agricultural field with cotton plants in rows, with a digital overlay identifying the empty space between rows.

Research

Research Update: Robotic Laser Weeding

Michaela Lubbers April 1, 2025

Soil moisture sensor at the end of a row in an agricultural field.

Research

Research Update: Peanut Irrigation

Michaela Lubbers March 1, 2025

Drone flying above an agricultural field.

Research

Research Update: Drone Seeding Cover Crops

Michaela Lubbers February 1, 2025

John Deere ExactEmerge seed meter

Research

Research Update: Planter Performance

Michaela Lubbers January 2, 2025

Aerial photo of cotton field in which the research trial is being held.

Research

Research Update: Advanced Cotton Irrigation Scheduling

Michaela Lubbers October 16, 2024

Solar powered pest traps

Research

Research Update: IoT Smart Traps

Michaela Lubbers September 20, 2024