Garden City Community College (GCCC) in Garden City, Kansas has successfully concluded the first offering of Technology in Agriculture (AGRO-111), a course developed in collaboration with NASA Acres and Kansas State University and launched in Fall 2025. This partnership aligns closely with NASA Acres goals to support agricultural workforce development and expand access to Earth observation tools for students and educators.

This fall, NASA Acres reinforced its commitment to agricultural workforce development at the 2025 National Future Farmers of America (FFA) Convention & Expo, the nation’s leading event for agricultural education and leadership. With more than 70,000 students, educators, sponsors, and industry leaders in attendance, the convention represents an important pipeline for the next generation of farmers, scientists, engineers, and innovators.

Earlier this spring, 8 early-career professionals with the NASA DEVELOP Program joined the NASA Acres team at Colorado State University (CSU) to complete 10-week feasibility studies focused on developing use cases for the application of satellite Earth observations (EO) for rangeland and ranch management. Tony Vorster, a research scientist in Warner College’s Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory (NREL), is the primary investigator for the NASA Acres work at CSU that the studies contributed to.