Looking Ahead

AgGateway 2020

Looking Ahead

By Doug Farrington, 2018 Chair of the AgGateway Strategic Board of Directors

(Excerpted from Doug Farrington’s presentation at Annual Conference)

I’d like to take a few minutes to talk about how the Strategic Board has been working to prepare this organization to be the trusted leader in enabling digital agriculture. What does this organization need to look like in 2020 for AgGateway to address the dynamic needs of the industry in its transition to digital agriculture? How do we remain the “go-to” resource for industry collaboration and transformation? Are AgGateway’s mission and vision still relevant?

Here is our mission: “To promote and enable the industry’s transition to digital agriculture, and expand the use of information to maximize efficiency and productivity.” I think we would all agree that this mission is still valid and relevant. We know that our industry still has quite a ways to go in the digital exchange of information. We’re not there yet. And we need AgGateway and the work being done here to bridge that gap and speed up that transition.

As for our long-term vision, it is to be the trusted leader in enabling digital agriculture. AgGateway provides the trusted forum where:

  • Resources are developed
  • Global collaboration occurs
  • Members are equipped to realize the benefits of digital agriculture,
  • And the industry maximizes the power of information to operate profitably, safely and sustainably.

This vision is also still relevant. This is the vision we still need to pursue here at AgGateway.

But to pursue that mission and vision, AgGateway needs to continue to evolve. After all, we’re living in an industry characterized by consolidation, with larger companies than ever before throughout the value chain. We also have many new entrants to the industry, with new ideas about digital agriculture. At the same time, within companies, the decisions about what kind of information is shared, and how it is shared, are sometimes made in several different departments, at different levels of a company. And that data – that need for digital implementation – exists across many sectors and many products and services. In fact, every point of data exchange needs to consider and be a part of the “big picture” of standards.

We know AgGateway needs to continue to change to meet these challenges. What we’ve heard from you, our members, is that you’d like an organization that:

  • Fosters initiatives across council lines – doesn’t work in silos, or rely on work within one specific council
  • Engages executive-level leaders within member companies
  • Pulls in more leaders from various ag sectors to the AgGateway table
  • Works within the limitations of the work you all need to do on your regular jobs
  • Maintains a collaborative approach but also creates industry solutions more quickly.

So the board is considering AgGateway’s structure, how it can best function to facilitate member projects, to achieve our mission and vision, and whether there are additional groups or services that should be added to our organization. We welcome input from the membership as we create the 2020 plan. While the plan is still developing, I wanted to share some of our thoughts to date.

Centers of Activity

While our council structure has served us well, you’ve expressed concerns that the structure itself limits collaboration across the groups. So we are looking at the idea of Centers of Activity – these are overarching topic areas that can bridge many sectors. One recent inspiration for this concept is the new Traceability Working Group. This working group has the flexibility to address any traceability challenge that our members are facing and want to pursue. The group pulls participants from across the councils. Within the Traceability Working Group we have sub-groups working on Crop Protection, Food & Feed Safety, Provenance, and Seeding. That same concept of sub-groups could apply to this new Centers of Activity structure.

While we’re still working on the details, what we like about the Centers of Activity idea is that it encourages collaboration across AgGateway. In terms of structure, we think it’s important for the Centers to be flexible and informally structured, with AgGateway staff providing administration support. We foresee that there could be Centers of Activity for such areas as Traceability, Sustainability, Supply Chain, Regulatory, Emerging Technology, or Stewardship, for example. These are just examples; the members will decide on which Centers to create, and how they change as needs and interests change. We envision that these Centers would pursue project work and solutions.

Communities

Now, if we eliminate councils as recommended by the AgGateway leadership earlier this year, what do we have instead? We think it’s still important to provide a “home” for members – a place where people with common interests or in a common sector, can come together to share pain points and ideas. Our idea is to create Communities for this purpose. Our starting point for our Communities will be the common areas of interest we have today: Ag Retail, Crop Protection, Crop Nutrition, etc. But we can expand these communities to include other interests, such as for crop insurance, grower groups, etc. These communities can also initiate projects and execute tasks. But we don’t foresee these groups as having the formality of our current Council structure. Each Community might only choose to meet a few times a year, and be focused on general idea-sharing and communication. The staff would help with administration of the Communities, so the administrative burden on volunteers would diminish, allowing volunteers to focus more on idea generation.

Committees

We would like to maintain some committee work, but we plan to reduce and consolidate the committees we have today, while also adding a couple of new ideas. Some committees will be led by members and some with be led by staff. We’re considering the concept of a Digital Resources Committee, which would incorporate several of our current committees and working groups, including Architecture, ADAPT, AgGlossary, Data Privacy & Security, AGIIS Directory Oversight and Standards & Guidelines. We’re currently thinking we’ll keep our Communications, Conference, and Membership committees and add a new Emerging Technologies committee.

What else are we considering for AgGateway 2020? We’re evaluating our governance structure, to be sure AgGateway 2020 supports our mission and provides member value. We’re exploring relationships with other organizations to increase our efficiency and our reach. We’re considering the value of ad hoc, facilitated forums at AgGateway meetings to provide more opportunity to collaborate and define projects. We will look at ways to develop and implement project work more quickly. We’re also looking at ways to reduce the administrative load on member volunteers, and what this means in terms of our staffing.

Digital Resources

We’ll continue to provide the digital resources we use and value today such as Standards & Guidelines, implementation tools like ADAPT; Reference Data, AGIIS, ROI calculators, etc. But we’ll want to create new digital resources. Some ideas proposed include roadmaps for industry and member engagement, digital ag score cards, and digital resource catalogs. We’re also considering the need for more education, such as training videos, webinars, seminars, etc., and member certification.

Obviously there is still a lot of work to be done. AgGateway 2020 will continue to be member-driven, and we need and look forward to your input.

2019 Plans

Our vision for 2020 obviously guides our planning for the coming year. As we enter 2019, we’ll need to start positioning AgGateway to achieve what we need by January 2020. But we’ll also need to keep delivering on the activities and value that are already in motion. Per our 5-year plan, in 2019 we will continue to focus on three areas: Digital Ag Leadership, Member Value and Increasing Membership and Engagement.

Our first objective, under Digital Ag Leadership, will be to finalize and implement a transformational plan for AgGateway 2020. The board will present the plan to the rest of the AgGateway leadership early in the year, and we’ll continue to tweak it throughout 2019. While we put that plan in action, we don’t want to slow down or impede any of the valuable work you’re doing right now. We will maintain and nurture our current activities that are focused on connections in the value chain.

Our second objective in 2019 is Member Value. For this objective, our goal is to develop three new joint activities to address challenges with connectivity in the industry. We plan to pursue these activities with industry or standards associations, government groups, and/or academic institutions. The ultimate goal is publication, industry awareness or better industry efficiency. We’ll look to AgGateway members to provide input on organizations we can work with, identifying projects to pursue, and support in working with those partner organizations. We’ll also call on members to participate in these activities and to provide their success stories.

The third objective is to increase Membership and Engagement. We want to increase the use of resources, which leads directly to enabling eConnectivity. We’ll do this by actively recruiting new member companies, developing a simple, streamlined and transparent process to facilitate eConnectivity initiatives, and launching at least three new eConnectivity initiatives. We’ll need your help to identify new member prospects that should be involved with AgGateway, and to connect AgGateway staff and leaders with contacts at those organizations. As always, we’ll also want your feedback on new connectivity initiatives.

So to wrap up, I hope that gives you a picture of where we’re headed, and why. It’s an exciting time for us and I’m truly looking forward to working with all of you on the changes ahead. If AgGateway members have input on what should be in our plans moving forward, feel free to post those thoughts on this AgGateway 2020 wiki page. Watch for further information on “AgGateway 2020” in upcoming issues of the AgGateway newsletter!