Using AI in Organic Ag
Artificial Intelligence can be used in many facets of farming, from streamlining organic certification to helping analyze tissue tests and choosing fertilizer materials and rates. But there are many options - advisors can use proprietary programs to chat with pre-trained ag-bots or go straight to ai chatbots to ask questions. What are ways advisors are currently finding success with ai, and what are the pitfalls? Join us for a conversation with a farmer/advisor who has been farming with ai all season and an organic certifier who has explored using ai to streamline processes and reduce paperwork. You’ll find some new ideas and some helpful warnings.
This is a free Zoom Event!
SPEAKERS
Dan Perkins
Dan Perkins runs Perkins’ Good Earth Farm with his wife and family. Their vegetable farm is a permanent bed, deep compost, certified organic/real organic project certified farm located in NW Indiana. Dan and his wife Julie are first generation farmers and are currently in their 18th year of farming (8th year of full-time farming). They have 4 full-time equivalent workers on 1.5 acres of production (but those acres act like 3 acres in production because they double and triple crop. The farm is small but mighty - feeding over 1,000 people a week from our CSA, small batch kitchen, and wholesale customers. Gross sales in 2025 was $256K, or $176K/per acre from farm produce. Dan is a CCA, and has been utilizing AI over the last year and a half primarily as an agronomic tool to advise on their foliar sprays and soil amendments.
Franklin Smith
Franklin Smith has a decade of experience in the natural and organic food industry, and is currently the Wholesale Sales Manager at Pacific Botanicals, a 140-acre Regenerative Organic Certified herb farm and botanical trading company in Oregon. Prior to this role he worked in various corners of the organic handling sector—including positions at Guayakí Yerba Mate, Mountain Rose Herbs, Oregon Tilth, and Wolf & Associates.
Franklin has always been interested in how technology—particularly AI—can responsibly support complex regulatory systems like organic certification. After years of work in organic certification, he developed Organic Agent, a project focused on making USDA organic rules easier to navigate for both operators and certifiers, while always keeping human judgment at the center. Although Organic Agent is temporarily on pause, there are many lessons learned and helpful tactics to employ that he is always happy to share with any grower or food company going through the certification process. Franklin lives in Eugene, OR with his wife and daughter.
Sam Oschwald Tilton, Facilitator
“I have worked with organic farmers all over the US and Canada to understand production systems and solve weed management issues. This past season, on farms and in winter conferences, I spoke with as many farmers and ag professionals as I could to understand the questions that organic producers have, and the experts that they’d like to learn from. Those conversations helped me identify the topics and guests for this series. I am excited to bring together a wide range of farmers and ag professionals from many backgrounds, all of whom have an experienced perspective to share. In each call I look forward to having an intelligent conversation with the guest that introduces the topic to those who are unfamiliar and also dives deep to bring further understanding and clear tips to listeners. After the conversation, we’ll take questions from listeners, so that they can communicate directly with each guest to get the answers that they need. My goal for this call series is to provide crucial information on topics facing organic and transition-curious farmers, in an approachable conversation that listeners can easily listen to during their lunch hour.”
“AI is a technology with incredible power but lots of pitfalls. Join us to learn how two ag professionals are using ai in their farming and advising.”
This event is supported through the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Transition to Organic Partnership Program (TOPP).
TOPP is a program of the USDA Organic Transition Initiative and is administered by the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) National Organic Program (NOP).