By Wendy Smith, AgGateway President & CEO
(Excerpted from Wendy Smith’s presentation at Annual Conference)
For our 2018 Annual Report, we chose the title, “The Gateway to Digital Agriculture”, recognizing our mission to promote and enable the industry’s transition to digital agriculture and expand the use of information to maximize efficiency and productivity. That title also highlights AgGateway’s role as a conduit to the resources and collaboration you need to be successful. We are on the threshold of change and opportunity in our industry. This organization must continue to be the gateway to that opportunity for our members.
In 2018 we made great progress in this first year of our 5-year strategic plan. The main goals of that plan are to:
Looking at our resources, you see some great examples of how we are providing digital ag leadership and member value.
This year the ADAPT Oversight Committee released the ADAPT ISO plugin, a major step forward for interoperability in precision agriculture. The American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) has named the ADAPT Framework and ISOXML Plugin as a winner in its AE50 program for 2019. Another indication of the level of interest ADAPT is generating is the fact that ADAPT has now been downloaded more than 12,000 times. Already, the new ISO plugin has been downloaded almost 3,000 times. We look forward to continued expansion of ADAPT adoption in 2019.
Another new resource is the irrigation standard, which is a tremendous achievement of our precision ag irrigation project also know as PAIL. The new standard has been accepted as a national standard by ASABE. The standard will help growers evaluate weather, soil and crop data, so they can make more informed decisions for smarter energy and water use. We are calling for participation for the next phase of the project, PAIL 2. (Check out the new PAIL flyer!)
There are several other precision ag advances to mention. AgGateway’s new Post-Image-Collection Specification for Agricultural Remote Sensing standard – also know as PICS, allows growers to bring images from satellites, planes and drones into their farm management information systems and convert them into usable information, regardless of the system manufacturer. The new ContextItem System helps farm management software keep up with the changing data-collection needs of different geographies. (Check out the new ContextItem flyer!) And the new AgGateway standard for Observations and Measurements helps users capture accurate quantitative and qualitative observations in the ag value chain. (Check out the new O&M flyer!)
Here are a few other advances in 2018:
All of this great work is thanks to you, our members. And this work sets us up well for 2019 and our vision for AgGateway 2020. (See the “AgGateway 2020” article this issue.)
2018 December Newsletter Home
Annual Conference: Thanks for a Great Conference!
AgGateway Year in Review: The Gateway to Digital Agriculture in 2018
AgGateway 2020: Looking Ahead
Recognition: AgGateway Recognizes Leaders; Joe Tevis Receives Top Leadership Award
New Member Profile: Welcome TerraMetric – Geospatial Applications
AGIIS Update: AGIIS Annual Maintenance is Upon Us!