Washington, D.C., Aug. 1, 2016 – Growers will soon be able to use more powerful tools to increase their efficiency and productivity thanks to the collaborative efforts of dozens of leading agricultural companies involved in AgGateway, the non-profit consortium dedicated to eConnectivity in agriculture. These companies are tackling data exchange and interoperability challenges in precision agriculture, resulting in AgGateway’s release this year of new standards, models and other resources that will greatly enhance the ability of growers to easily manage their data. Progress on these challenges will be reported this week at the InfoAg precision ag conference in St. Louis by AgGateway member companies in conference sessions and on the exhibit floor.
“We’re entering a new era for solutions in precision ag,” said Mike Santostefano of AgIntegrated, Chair of AgGateway’s Precision Ag Council. “The hard work continues, but we have already released or are close to releasing a number of important resources that will significantly aid in data exchange and management for growers.
“One of the greatest achievements is how the industry has worked together through AgGateway to complete this work,” he added.
Among the new AgGateway resources are the open-source Agricultural Data Application Programming Toolkit (ADAPT) for interoperability, which was made available to the public in February and is now being adopted by Farm Management Information Systems (FMIS) developers and terminal manufacturers; AgGateway Core Documents for Field Operations, which have been made available through the ADAPT data model and continue to be enhanced; documentation from the Standardized Precision Ag Data Exchange (SPADE) Project for interoperability; and new irrigation standards from the Precision Ag Irrigation Language (PAIL) Project for better irrigation management. Meanwhile, work continues in such areas as crop scouting, crop nutrition, telematics and commodity grain movement.
AgGateway’s Precision Ag Council, which is comprised of more than 100 AgGateway member companies, is developing ways for growers and service providers to better manage valuable data used in field operations, and precision water management and telematics; as well as rail and truck grain transport. The result will be that growers and their trusted advisors will be able to securely exchange data collected throughout the growing season and transform the data into actionable information in FMIS and other tools. These improvements also facilitate crop insurance and compliance reporting.
AgGateway’s ADAPT has attracted significant attention this year as a means to enable interoperability between precision ag systems, regardless of manufacturer. Software companies are developing plug-ins needed to utilize ADAPT's framework, which will allow the user to easily move precision ag data between different software systems and data formats. For example, ADAPT will enable FMIS programs to easily use precision ag data collected on vehicle displays (field computers). More information can be found at www.ADAPTFramework.org.
"This is the year we will finally have a solution to interoperability, which has been a formidable hurdle to the use of precision ag technologies," said AgGateway’s ADAPT Committee Chairman Mark Stelford, General Manager of Premier Crop Systems.
More information on AgGateway’s precision agriculture activities can be found at www.AgGateway.org. The website also includes general information on AgGateway and how to join in these industry initiatives.
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AgGateway is a non-profit consortium of businesses that helps member companies improve their profitability and productivity by promoting, enabling and expanding eBusiness in agriculture and agriculture related businesses. www.AgGateway.org
Download a PDF of this release here.
Contact: Susan Ruland, AgGateway +1 (202) 742-5967, ext. 10