Countdown to Mid-Year Meeting

Portfolio Update

Wraps Ups and Launches for Q2

By Ben Craker, Portfolio Manager

The time has come to cue that 1986 big-hair, heavy metal classic song: it’s the Final Countdown.

Indeed, we are mere days away from another jam-packed Mid-Year Meeting in Altoona. Iowa. Just like spring planting, everyone knows it’s coming … but it always seems to catch people surprised and unprepared when it arrives. Many Working Groups are putting the final touches on deliverables, and other groups are preparing discussions to set the course on where they go next. Undoubtedly, there will be an abundance of great discussions on numerous topics as well as some of the best networking to be had in the ag data industry.

What’s Wrapping Up

  • Dairy Feed Data, WG25 will be presenting its use case and key data element documentation, followed by a discussion on what to address next. In addition, I will share an update on the work of other organizations active in the dairy data space to identify areas of alignment and collaboration.
  • Data Ethics and Stewardship, WG26 will be reviewing the final draft of the new Data Ethics Whitepaper. All AgGateway members should have received a copy for review ahead of the meeting so the team can collect feedback and comments from membership to incorporate prior to broader publication.
  • Field Boundary: GNSS Accuracy, WG24 passed its recommendations along to the ADAPT Standard team, Those changes are now being implemented and will be part of a v2.0 release of ADAPT Standard that is planned to happen around the Mid-Year Meeting.

Meetings on Future Work

  • Work Order – Work Record will host a discussion to gauge interest in gap checking the prior work of the Closed Loop Spray project against the ADAPT Standard. Due to a likely high overlap in participants in this effort with the European Reporting ADAPT mapping WG21 that is currently on hold, much of the discussion will focus on prioritizing the different projects and determining what to tackle first.
  • Modus – the plant tissue team is a few weeks away from finalizing the plant tissue list, so we will miss being able to present that resource at the mid-year meeting. However, that means it is time to start thinking about what’s next. There has been some interest expressed in bringing the feed test list up to version 2.0 structure. There is also still the outstanding topic of a version 2 schema to address needs that have been documented as the teams have worked through the soil, manure, and plant tissue lists.
  • Field Boundaries wrapped up the GNSS accuracy work as mentioned above. The working group leaders also led the first in the Inside AgGateway webinar series where there was some great discussions and thoughts on where to go next. This session will primarily focus on those topics like obstacles, buffer zones, imagery derived boundary accuracy, tramlines or other topics that could be next on the list.
  • Traceability will also be a topic of discussion, following up on some updates made to the API and questions out of the Scale Ticker inside AgGateway webinar gaps still exist even with the extensive work teams have already done. What pieces need to be put in place will be reviewed to gauge interest on the next project to kick off.

In addition to all that, we are hosting an Entity ID workshop held at the end of the conference. This session is restricted to working group members only, so if you are planning to join make sure you are signed up. We are also doing “catch up” sessions so anyone that was not at the previous meetings and in-person discussions can hit the ground running. This team is poised to crack a long standing and difficult topic for the industry and we want to make sure participants are up to speed on the progress and decisions made so far. If you have any questions on the status of Entity ID, contact me directly (ben.craker@aggateway.org) and I will be glad to help get you caught up!

As usual, if you have any questions on the activities of any of these working groups, an idea for a new group, or want to get engaged feel free to contact me (ben.craker@aggateway.org), or sign up for a working group here.