Next Power Breakfast explores the tech behind the USDA mission

When the Department of Agriculture was created by President Abraham Lincoln, he called it the People’s Department.

At that time, nearly half of all Americans lived on farms. A lot has changed since then. Today, about 2 percent of the population live on farms, but USDA’s mission has not diminished. If anything it is larger and more critical.

The food and agriculture industry contributes $1.1 trillion to the U.S. domestic product to give just one data point. The mission for USDA has expanded to food safety, economic development, natural resource conservation and advancing science.

And enabling that today is IT, from back-office systems to innovative uses of artificial intelligence and wireless technologies.

That’s why you don’t want to miss Friday’s Washington Technology Power Breakfast on doing business with USDA at the Carahsoft Conference Center in Reston, Virginia.

The event kicks off at 7:45 a.m. with registration and breakfast. The program begins at 8:30 a.m.

Giving us the chief information officer’s perspective will be Tim McCrosson, who leads those efforts at USDA’s Rural Development, which supports the economic development of rural communities. The agency also has key priorities around climate change and environmental justice, racial justice, and improving market opportunities.

McCrosson will share his initiatives that support these priorities as well as what he expects from industry.

Schyler Nunziata from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service will be on hand as well to talk about how she is using artificial intelligence to detect and track diseases in plants. This is a notable example of how USDA is embracing cutting edge technologies to meet their mission.

She is a bioinformatician and is leveraging vast amounts of data to track plant and animal diseases. Her firsthand insights will offer a unique view into how USDA operates and the role technology plays.

The program includes an industry panel with executives from leading providers to USDA. They’ll talk about the business they are doing with the department and what they see coming down the pike. We'll have executives from CACI International, CGI Federal and Science Applications International Corp.

All attendees will also receive a copy of a market research report on USDA that we’ve put together, which will include data on spending patterns, major contracts and top contractors.

Follow this link to register.