New Mexico State University’s artificial intelligence and agriculture initiative has been honored with the 2025 Rangelands Innovators Award in the collaborative team category. The partnership includes the Massey family of the Massey Ranch Precision Ranching and Virtual Fencing Project of Animas, New Mexico, U.S Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service Jornada Experimental Range, Bat Conservation International, the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, the Sierra Water and Soil Conservation District, the Bureau of Land Management’s Abandoned Mine Lands Program and BLM’s Las Cruces District Office.
“This award acknowledges the research that NMSU, in collaboration with the U.S Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service, is doing in developing intelligent technologies and integrating them into tools that are useful and accessible to ranchers,” said Santiago Utsumi, animal and range sciences associate professor.
“This is very important research in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences as part of the Digital Agriculture program. Dr. Utsumi’s pioneer work is representative of the excellence and commitment of the ACES faculty and students with New Mexico’s agriculture,” College of ACES Dean Rolando Flores said.
Presented by the BLM and the Public Lands Council at the PLC’s annual meeting Sept. 17, the award recognizes innovation in managing grazing on public lands while balancing environmental stewardship, wildlife habitat enhancement and sustainable ranching.
“What we really want to do is to mitigate the ongoing digitalization gaps that ranchers and communities face in New Mexico while providing them with new AI-based decision support tools,” Utsumi said.
This initiative is led by a cross-disciplinary team of rangeland scientists, computer engineers and data scientists. The system provides real-time dashboards and alerts that guide virtual fencing applications, track livestock behavior, and inform forage conditions and water availability.
“These tools allow ranchers to monitor livestock, water, forage and rainfall in real time, which helps them adapt more quickly to variable climates, improve animal well-being and reduce costs,” Utsumi said.
The project is currently being tested on 12 ranches in California, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico. It processes more than 150 million data records collected from 1,150 sensors and 27 internet-connected base station routers. The project also provides hands-on training for NMSU students, giving them experience with emerging technologies and interdisciplinary education that will shape the future of agriculture.