By Alex Thomasson – CAST President

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As current President of CAST with a couple of months left in my tenure, I’ll share a few thoughts about the importance of this organization to agriculture.  In 1972, Charles A. Black, Norman Borlaug, and other committed scientists formed CAST as a means to “bring science-based information to policymaking and the public.”  Having seen the inner workings of CAST and being involved in a great deal of transition over the last year plus, I assure you that CAST continues to be committed to that goal today and is constantly identifying ways to do this job better and better.  My involvement with CAST began under Kent Scheske’s tenure as Executive Vice President (EVP).  When I joined CAST as ASABE’s representative, Kent reached out to me for a meeting at a conference we were both attending, and he presented materials about who CAST is, what it does, and how it works.  He made a strong impression on me as a positive, serious, and dedicated leader, and I came to see that his greatest strength was in developing lasting relationships that have served CAST well.

CAST has undergone tremendous transition during my time with the organization, including learning new paradigms during the world-changing Covid-19 pandemic.  Now, within the last year, Kent has retired, and CAST hired Chris Boomsma to take his place as EVP.  As I’ve been CAST President during the past year, I’ve seen Chris work at a detailed level, and you can rest assured that CAST is in good hands and building new relationships.  A lot more transition has occurred over this year including the sale of CAST’s headquarters building, changes in communication strategies and methods, and new branding and a new look for CAST that are being rolled out.  All these things have been decided upon and carried out with great deliberation and stakeholder input, and they have been necessary to continue and improve our efforts in CAST’s central mission.  In that regard, I think you’ll see the pace of publishing at CAST pick up over the next year as we redouble our efforts to “bring science-based information to policymaking and the public.”  For example, my field of research is in autonomous systems for agriculture, and a big focus of that effort is in artificial intelligence.  My hope is, and I think we’ve set the process in motion for it, that we’ll publish a paper on AI in agriculture in the first half of 2025.  And that will be only one of several papers CAST will publish next year.

When I became CAST President, I set eight goals for my tenure:

1. To encourage and simplify lifetime membership.
2. To engage young members and increase their opportunities for involvement.
3. To strengthen CAST’s role as a strong, reliable, and authoritative advocate for agriculture.
4. To maintain CAST’s scientific objectivity so that its position papers are viewed as informed and credible.
5. To explore new means of communicating critical ideas to the public.
6. To expand CAST’s academic and corporate membership with emphasis on new technologies like robotics, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, phenomics, etc.
7. To draw more heavily on the expertise, experience, and networks of the Board of Directors.
8. To develop and/or refine onboarding documents and distribution protocol for new members.

While we haven’t accomplished all these goals in full, I can say we’ve made good progress on all of them with the help of CAST staff, and it didn’t hurt that several of my goals coincided nicely with Chris Boomsma’s goals.  I’ll hand the gavel off to Brandon Neuschafer as incoming CAST President in a couple of months, and with his legal background and focus on food, he’ll bring a fresh perspective and timely emphases on different topics, which are key aspects of CAST’s progress and continuing vital work.  I am thankful to have had the opportunity to serve CAST as President this year, and I will continue to commit myself to the betterment of agriculture and CAST as I step into its Past-President role.

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Alex Thomasson is a professor, department head, and William B. and Sherry Berry Endowed Chair in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at Mississippi State University.

His research focus is on agricultural autonomy, precision agriculture, remote sensing, drones, image analysis, optoelectronic sensors, cotton production, and processing.