Making Connections at North America Summer Conferences

Events – Education – Outreach

Making Connections at North America Summer Conferences

Last month, AgGateway staff and volunteers hit the road to attend two major Midwest North America agriculture events of importance to our constituents – The International Conference on Precision Agriculture (ICPA) in Manhattan, KS, and Tech Hub Live Conference and Expo in Des Moines, IA.

International Conference on Precision Agriculture (ICPA)

ICPA gathers ag technology and precision agriculture faculty and field researchers from around the world to network and share their progress and breakthroughs. Precision research focused graduate students also attend to share their studies in poster sessions.

The conference features multiple tracks of 20-minute presentations, which provided AgGateway staff and volunteers the opportunity to present papers on key initiatives including Traceability API, the PAIL irrigation standard, data stewardship, and ISO TC-347.

“We had great discussions with many researchers engaged with collecting grower data from on-farm trials who clearly see the need for more standards to make their lives easier to interact with data,” says Ben Craker, who represented AgGateway staff at the event. “Overall, there is good name awareness of AgGateway and ADAPT – but not as good of an understanding of either – which is helpful to note as we formulate future communication and outreach plans.”

He adds that AgGateway’s Gateway to Ag Careers was mentioned as a particularly positive program by past participants. “Everyone that I talked to that had been involved either as a student or sponsor gave it tremendous reviews. There were two GTAC alumni presenting at the conference, and one of the 2023 recipients – Cole Byers – received the International Society of Precision Agriculture’s (ISPA) Outstanding Graduate Student Award.”

Overall, the conference featured several topics that are high on the list of priorities for AgGateway, including interoperability that improved how rapidly farmers implement new practices and methods, and work on modeling, implementing, and scaling nutrient use efficiency programs that improve profitability and stewardship while maintaining yield.

“ISPA also engaged in some good conversations about how the organization can enable more global collaboration to better share learnings and best practices around the world – similar to AgGateway's growth – to a more global organization,” says Craker.

Tech Hub Live


The Tech Hub Live Conference and Expo in Des Moines, IA, brought together technology stakeholders from across the upstream value chain, including ag retailers, agronomy consultants, agriculture manufacturers across all segments of the industry along with university and extension specialists and a wide range of professionals with an interest in the current state of ag technology.

AgGateway staffers Jeremy Wilson, Ben Craker, and Paul Schrimpf hosted a meeting room at the conference and engaged numerous existing and prospective members in one-on-one conversations over two days. More than 700 attendees were on hand.

Craker and AgGateway volunteer Ann Vande Lune both participated in a panel discussion titled, Data’s Evolution: A Year of Progress in Standardization and Security. “We were able to discuss some of our key advancements over the past 12 months, including the release of the ADAPT standard, progress on Modus, and the PAIL irrigation standard,” says Craker. “Overall, panelists and attendees were very positive about AgGateway and the work we are doing.”

It was another incredible conference with a lot of great content,” says Wilson. “And it was exciting to get to meet with a number of existing and prospective members to talk about all the exciting things we are working on at AgGateway now. From the formative work on improving AGIIS through the new Entity ID Working Group to field boundaries to Modus and all the efforts toward improving data interoperability. And it was really energizing to me to get people’s feedback telling us, ‘yes, you are headed in the right direction, and keep up the good work.’”