AgGateway’s Work Enables Innovation

From The President

AgGateway’s Work Enables Innovation

By Brent Kemp, AgGateway President and CEO

We live in an interconnected world. Obvious, right? Input shortages, severe weather, transportation constraints, and similar events often put our industry in the spotlight, especially when food insecurity results.

As the world grapples with the implications of such problems as it seeks solutions, agriculture stakeholders look to address topics like sustainability, traceability, climate, and ethical practices. Many increasingly turn to data as the tool to demonstrate that supply chain and field operations activities do not harm and perhaps help. And as they do, they turn to us at AgGateway for perspective.

Over the past several weeks, AgGateway staff have had the opportunity to engage in conversations with regulators, government agencies, and others to discuss the current state of data interoperability, as well as the opportunities for standards-based data exchange to enable all parties to engage in best practices for operations - regardless of what the operations are.

We’ve participated in panels for the Association of American Pesticide Control Officials (AAPCO), the Federal Communications Commission, the AEF AgIN project team, and on the Research Data Alliance’s “Improving Global Agricultural Data” community of practice. In all these we’ve shared the successes of AgGateway members implementing supply chain and field operations standards and tools to speed data exchange and improve efficiency and data quality.

Each of these opportunities reminds me that the work members undertake and complete in one segment or for one business purpose enables further innovation to occur. Examples of these include the following:

  • Crop protection implementation of GTINs for product identification not only improves logistics and reporting processes through the supply chain, but also results in improved master data management for manufacturers and trading partners.
  • Better control of master data may result in the ability to support emerging concerns such as digital label compliance and data amalgamation and analysis.
  • Crosswalks between syntax within current message implementations may lead to crosswalks between AgGateway standards and other industry segments - logistics, livestock processing, and biodiversity reporting, just to name a few.
  • Interest in the next release of the Modus specification is growing from parties beyond AgGateway and laboratories, including organizations in Europe and Australia.

As we explore the ways in which our data standards and resources may apply to other initiatives, we welcome your insights and experiences. If you have an emerging business need, let us know and we’ll convene a virtual or in person meet up.

If you’ve leveraged your implementation of ADAPT or Ag eStandards to improve some other process, let us know and we’ll work with you to share your success - others probably have the same need. Your investments in interoperability are opening new opportunities and addressing new questions. They are the basis on which new standards-based data solutions will be developed to help your organization continue to be sustainable and help to feed and fuel the world.