AgGateway and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) have forged an agreement to work together on data projects to benefit American farmers in the transition to digital agriculture. The current agreement will consist of a series of efforts over the next 20 months; all results of the collaboration will be made publicly available.
Specifically, the collaboration is designed to provide both parties with the opportunity to better serve the American farmer by:
1) Aligning USDA and AgGateway data elements and data standards
2) Developing procedures within the USDA that align with the use of precision ag technology and data used by producers and agri-businesses.
AgGateway members and USDA information technology experts will cover a number of work areas, including refining the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) agriculture domain published data elements and standards; establishing application programming interface (API) standards; establishing USDA open data standards (data.gov); incorporating USDA terms and definitions into AgGateway's AgGlossary; beginning work to establish standards and guidelines for field/part-field identification purposes; and data interchange format development for direct reporting of crop, acreage, acreage location and production.
Updates will be regularly reported in AgGateway news to the industry and at AgGateway meetings, including the upcoming Mid-Year Meeting in Altoona, IA, June 11-14. More on AgGateway activities, including how to become involved, can be found at AgGateway.org.
