Building New Value from AgGateway Resources

From The President

Building New Value from AgGateway Resources

By Brent Kemp, AgGateway President and CEO

AgGateway América Latina celebrates its fifth anniversary this year. I couldn’t be prouder of the work that this group has done to educate the South American community about the opportunities and advantages of collaborative standards development and implementation.

From its formation and through today, Regional Director José Loyola has been a tireless advocate for the organization’s work and value, and a passionate evangelist for membership. And they contribute their own energy and insight into AgGateway Working Groups and leadership teams. I thank all of you for your enthusiasm and diligence in moving the agricultural industry forward in Latin America and across the globe.

Another thing that they have demonstrated is a commitment to a key component of the value of AgGateway that often gets lost: Creating value from our reusable resources. For example, participants from member companies Venturus, Nutrien, Embrapa, AsBraAP, Proagrica, and many more have evaluated and modified AgGateway tools like Modus, ADAPT, and PAIL for use in their context.

But Working Groups responding to specifically regional issues aren’t the only places your participation benefits your companies. As the soil and laboratory testing efforts show, review and modernization of existing resources to address new challenges expands on the investment you’ve already made.

In Europe, stakeholders are beginning a review of the ADAPT data model, aligning data, identifying gaps, and documenting use cases to make the forthcoming ADAPT standard a truly global resource for practical field operations data collection and exchange. LATAM will be launching work on climate data collection needs and expectations soon, and we expect that the SPADE Core Documents and Traceability API efforts will have some bearing on their activity. Reuse of the work you’ve already developed and implemented is paying royalties to you in saved time and effort today.

As good as our work has been, we’re not afraid to make enhancements to our resources, or to change course significantly if needed. We can point to the move from older, more limited entity identifiers to the Global Location Number (GLN), and the constant enhancements to the Ag Industry Identification System (AGIIS) to prove our commitment to addressing the concerns and needs of members. Each of these changes, and more, were driven by members stepping up, saying “this no longer meets our needs,” and starting the conversation in AgGateway’s meetings.

The industry benefits when members share these pre-competitive issues – especially when they impact widely adopted and implemented tools and practices – and solicit buy-in and participation in the change.

Our industry is sometimes unfairly criticized for moving slowly to adopt technology. One of the ways we can eliminate that perception is to keep communicating and building awareness of business needs such that we don’t knock back the progress we’ve already made. AgGateway has a successful record of working through these transitions. Keep bringing your challenges to the table so we can move forward together.

Congratulations to América Latina on its anniversary. Thanks to all of you for your continued engagement and participation across regional boundaries. Let us know where your next challenge is so we can help you extend the value that AgGateway offers you and your trading partners. I look forward to the conversations and the work we will do together in the next five years and beyond.