Two New Working Groups in Europe Region Focus on Track and Trace

Europe

Two New Working Groups in Europe Region Focus on Track and Trace

By Dan Berne, AgGateway Portfolio Manager

The ability to easily and effectively track and trace farm inputs is increasingly important in to support a sustainable agriculture. In Europe, however, multiple data exchange standards and definitions exist across different countries, often causing delays and inefficiencies, and hampering the ability to provide traceability. This is particularly true for product identification data. AgGateway Europe has been bringing together companies and ag data specialists to standardize data exchange for farm inputs, specifically for seed, fertilizer and crop protection products.

The first of these working groups (Farm Inputs: Reference Data, WG06) will focus on the exchange of reference data for seed, fertilizer and crop protection products. In Europe there are multiple country-specific data sources indicating which crop protection products are allowed to be used on which crops and under what circumstances. This initiative should lead to a standard REST Json API interface to connect to all of these regional data sources.

The second working group (Farm Inputs: Work Order, Work Record, WG 07) will focus on Work Order and Work record data for the same category of products, especially on the exchange of recommendations in the use of crop protection products on specific crop fields between advisory systems and farm management information systems.

By standardizing on data exchange standards, companies can better support sustainable agriculture, increase transparency, and improve interoperability, as well as provide opportunities to boost innovation.

The efforts have been led by AgGateway’s European Regional Director Conny Graumans. Although centered in Europe, the resulting digital assets will be global in nature and align with other AgGateway digital assets.

“The advantage of AgGateway,” Graumans said, “is that there is already a considerable amount of work that we can draw from, such as the ADAPT data model, the AgGlossary, and SPADE work order and work record definitions.”

The Reference Data Working Group will also leverage and align with work done by AgGateway’s Product Catalog Working Group. To date, 18 companies or organizations have joined each of the working groups. If you would like more information on these working groups, contact Conny Graumans at conny.graumans@AgGateway.org. Or go to the AgGateway wiki sign-up sheet for Working Groups, at https://aggateway.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/PMC/overview.