Europe Update

Regional Report

Europe Update

By Conny Gaumans, Regional Director – Europe

I am excited to share details on the progress we are making on two projects coming out of the Europe Region. As referenced in Dan Berne’s Working Group Roundup, we are preparing two new charters:  Potato Provenance and Closed Loop Spray.

Potato Provenance Charter
The potato processing industry would like to capture as much data as possible about how and where potatoes were or are grown, not only for compliance purposes (e.g. GlobalGap) but also for agronomic purposes; for example, to learn about the ideal growing conditions at variety level.

The farm management information systems (FMIS) used by the farmers are considered an important data source. Crop related data reports coming out of FMIS in Europe utilize a host of different digital “standards”: eDaplos, eCROP, EDI-Crop, AgGateway’s Work Record, csv, Excel, pdf, and proprietary formats. The potato industry uses different formats in different countries to capture this kind of crop related data.

The efficiency gains would be substantial for all parties if the industry supported a global standard to exchange this type of data. The main objective of this charter is to agree on a recommended standard to exchange the field and crop related data – a standard that is not only applicable for potatoes, but for all arable crop types.

The Closed Loop Spray Charter
The Closed Loop Spray charter aims to support, as a producer of chemical crop protection products, the contractor and the farmer in the best possible use and application of crop protection products. This meets the industry's claims to “help growers avoid mistakes,” to achieve “compliance and traceability,” and prove out good “stewardship of product usage.”

To be clear, by “Closed Loop Spray” we mean “end-to-end documentation and resource identification” and not “real-time feedback-driven control.”

Topics that will be addressed in this charter are:
Product Discovery – When an input is loaded on the machine, the system enables unambiguous product identification to discover which product has just been loaded – either through an RFID, a GS1 QR code, or something similar.

Label Data Compliant Work Order – The machine and the FMIS are able to query a catalog data source for a product to identify the agronomic constraints (wind speed, buffer zone, crop, etc.). The FMIS is able to generate work orders, taking the constraints into consideration, and the machine is able to enforce these constraints.

Verifiable Work Record – Demonstrate that the spray as carried out is recorded in a verifiable way that can be used for regulatory compliance, or traceability purposes.

For more information on these new charters, contact Conny Graumans (conny.graumans@aggateway.org) via email.