What’s behind the ag-data logo? An examination of voluntary agricultural-data codes of practice

In this article, we analyse agricultural data (ag-data) codes of practice. After the introduction, Part II examines the emergence of ag-data codes of practice and provides two case studies—the American Farm Bureau’s Privacy and Security Principles for Farm Data and New Zealand’s Farm Data Code of Practice—that illustrate that the ultimate aims of ag-data codes of practice are inextricably linked to consent, disclosure, transparency and, ultimately, the building of trust. Part III highlights the commonalities and challenges of ag-data codes of practice. In Part IV several concluding observations are made. Most notably, while ag-data codes of practice may help change practices and convert complex details about ag-data contracts into something tangible, understandable and useable, it is important for agricultural industries to not hastily or uncritically accept or adopt ag-data codes of practice. There needs to be clear objectives, and a clear direction in which stakeholders want to take ag-data practices. In other words, stakeholders need to be sure about what they are trying, and able, to achieve with ag-data codes of practice. Ag-data codes of practice need credible administration, accreditation and monitoring. There also needs to be a way of reviewing and evaluating the codes in a more meaningful way than simple metrics such as the number of members: for example, we need to know something about whether the codes raise awareness and education around data practices, and, perhaps most importantly, whether they encourage changes in attitudes and behaviours around the access to and use of ag-data

Review of codes of conduct, voluntary guidelines and principles relevant for farm data sharing

Codes of conduct, voluntary guidelines, sets of principles on how to transparently govern farm data are a recent thing. While laws and regulations that govern personal data are becoming more and more common, legislation still does not cover data flows in many industries where different actors in the value chain need to share data and at the same time protect all involved from the risks of data sharing. Data in these value chains is currently governed through private data contracts or licensing agreements, which are normally very complex and on which data producers have very little negotiating power. Codes of conduct have started to emerge to fill the legislative void and to set common standards for data sharing contracts: codes provide principles that the signatories/subscribers/members agree to apply in their contracts

FOODIE: Farm‐Oriented Open Data in Europe

Ponencias, comunicaciones y pósters presentados en el 17th AGILE Conference on Geographic Information Science "Connecting a Digital Europe through Location and Place", celebrado en la Universitat Jaume I del 3 al 6 de junio de 2014.The agriculture sector is a unique sector due to its strategic importance for both European citizens (consumers) and European economy (regional and global) which, ideally, should make the whole sector a network of interacting organizations. Rural areas are of particular importance with respect to the agro-food sector and should be specifically addressed within this scope. The different groups of stakeholders involved in the agricultural activities have to manage many different and heterogeneous sources of information that need to be combined in order to make economically and environmentally sound decisions, which include (among others) the definition of policies (subsidies, standardisation and regulation, national strategies for rural development, climate change), valuation of ecological performances, development of sustainable agriculture, crop recollection timing and pricing, plagues detection, etc. Such processes are very labour intensive because most parts have to be executed manually and the necessary information is not always available or easily accessible. In this context, future agriculture knowledge management systems have to support not only direct profitability of agriculture or environment protection, but also activities of individuals and groups allowing effective collaboration among groups in agri-food industry, consumers, public administrations and wider stakeholders communities, especially in rural domain. To that end FOODIE project aims at building an open and interoperable agricultural specialized platform hub on the cloud for the management of spatial and non-spatial data relevant for farming production; for discovery of spatial and non-spatial agriculture related data from heterogeneous sources; integration of existing and valuable European open datasets related to agriculture; data publication and data linking of external agriculture data sources contributed by different public and private stakeholders allowing to provide specific and highvalue applications and services for the support in the planning and decision-making processes of different stakeholders groups related to the agricultural and environmental domains

A PHYSIOCRATIC SYSTEMS FRAMEWORK FOR OPEN SOURCE AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

This dissertation presents a new participatory approach to agricultural research and development. It surveys the biological, sociological, economic, and technical landscape and proposes a framework for adaptive management based on the 18th century Physiocratic school of land-based economics. Industrial specialization and heavy emphasis on deductive approaches to science have contributed to the disconnection of large portions of the population from natural systems. Conventional agriculture and agricultural research methods following this pattern have created expensive social, environmental, and economic external costs, while adaptive management and resilient agricultural systems have been hindered by the cost and complexity of quantifying environmental services. However, the convergence of low cost computing, sensors, memory, and resulting data analytic methods, combined with new collaborative tools and social media, have created an exciting open source environment with the potential to engage more people in analyzing and managing our natural environment

Digital technologies in Smart farming: resistances and changes in the organization of agricultural industry

Digital technologies are essential in the agricultural industry, and they affect organizational changes. Indeed, they modify the way of working of the agricultural industry, which reviews their rules. Digital technologies transform the agricultural industry, introduce innovative knowledge, and improve business performance. The innovation has new challenges involving agriculture consult- ants and farmers. Furthermore, it introduces new techniques and devices to create value and profitability. These digital technologies impact the agricultural industry, such as to improve business performance and environmental impacts. Some studies talk about or- ganizational changes in the agricultural industry, but there is not yet a substantial contribution of the literature that proposed to identify the main changes and or- ganizational resistances in the agricultural industry. For this reason, we have de- cided to focus on the organizational changes and resistances resulting from dig- itization in the agricultural industry. The paper aims to show the concepts of smart farming and digital technologies, how the agricultural industry uses them, and their impacts. This paper contributes to a literature review regarding digital technologies in smart farming based on these concepts. We try to identify the main organizational changes and resistances generated using digital technologies. We focus on a theoretical analysis of the changes and resistances caused by dig- italization in the industries and agricultural industries

The complex adoption pathways of digital technology in Australian livestock supply chains systems

This paper reviews early experiences, expectations and obstacles concerning the adoption of digital technologies in Australian livestock systems. Using three case studies of publicly-available information on Australia’s red meat industry, we identify the process of digitally enhanced value creation according to four themes: (1) supply chain operability; (2) product quality; (3) animal welfare; and (4) innovation and learning. We find reasons for both optimism and pessimism concerning the adoption of digital agriculture. While digital technology is being offered by various stakeholders to support collaboration within supply chains, it is also being met with scepticism amongst some producers who are not actively engaging with a digital transformation. We identify that the ‘technology fallacy’, which proposes that organisations, people, learning and processes are as important to digital transformation as the technology itself; but while digital technologies enable change, it is the people who determine how quickly it can occur. We argue that – since quality appears to be the major basis on which Australian red meat producers will compete in global markets – the broad adoption of digital technology will prove increasingly essential to future growth and sustainability of this supply chain

The use of future Internet technologies in the agriculture and food sectors:integrating the supply chain

The Future Internet is expected to greatly influence how the food and agriculture sector is currently operating. In this paper, we present the specific characteristics of the agri-food sector focusing on how information management in this area will take place under a highly heterogeneous group of actors and services, based on the EU SmartAgriFood project. We also discuss how a new dynamic marketplace will be realized based on the adoption of a number of specialized software modules, called “Generic Enablers” that are currently developed in the context of the EU FI-WARE project. Thus, the paper presents the overall vision for data integration along the supply chain as well as the development and federation of Future Internet services that are expected to revolutionize the agriculture sector

Towards a Sustainable Meat Production with Precision Livestock Farming

In future years, modern farmers will be under greater pressure to care for a large number of animals in order to remain economically viable. There is a growing global awareness of welfare conditions in animal production and a tendency towards more intensive production, resulting in a need for better genetics and a more precise way to monitor them. The challenge and the success of intensive farming will lie in how precisely we can steer the animals towards their genetic potential. Sensors have the potential to replace the eyes, ears and nose of the farmer by continuously assessing different key indicators throughout the production process, 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. The continuous automated monitoring of varying needs of individual living farm animals at every moment and anywhere is called Precision Livestock Farming (PLF). The aim of this paper is to describe how PLF-systems are used within the EU-PLF project to work towards an automated assessment of sustainability on farm level, by continuous monitoring of animal behaviour. The roadmap towards a sustainable meat production, viewed from a technologist’s point of view, is described hereafter in four steps. This phase comprises an implementation of PLF tools, where the basic inputs are measured and monitored in function of time. In a next step, a more complete control of the production process is pursued. In this step, the animal is used as a sensor to gather evidence on the animals’ bio response to its environment and management by the farmer. The final step towards the management of the meat production is through the monitoring of emissions and resource efficiency. PLF-technology and continuous monitoring of animal bio responses will improve the understanding of the production process. This will allow the farmer to manage his process by exception. Production data collection and sharing will enhance the transparency throughout the production chain and help the consumer make educated decisions

Customized Software in Distributed Embedded Systems: ISOBUS and the Coming Revolution in Agriculture

The electrification of agricultural equipment has been evolving for many years and in some ways is lagging behind other industries. However this strategy of following the lead of other industries now offers Ag the opportunity to move forward at a revolutionary pace. Network standards defined by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) committees are the basis for defining a rulebook for this industrystandardizing worldwide electronics interoperability. ISOBUS (ISO 11783) which defines a physical standard between tractors and implements will be an important enabler for most new product definitions. The foundation of this coming revolution will be provided through software. This paper outlines the electronics hardware and software architecture for off-road vehicles that allows for implementation of customized machine control features. There are several key areas discussed. The first enabler for this revolution is a software development and delivery system that defines a design methodology for creating and delivering software modules for a distributed set of controllers. This design methodology presents two advantages that today’s modern electronic technologies can deliver: 1) Customization with commodity hardware and 2) Service without replacing hardware parts anywhere in the world. The second enabler for this machine revolution is an ‘agile’ process to develop the software. Many product ideas are being valuated through a trial and error and continuous improvement process. Software will play an important enabler for these product definitions. A comparison between the worldwide trend for software processes, the Capability Maturity Model (CMM), and what type of process would fit the offroad industry is based around the maturity of the new product ideas. The strong supply chain link between dealers and customers for off-road machines, coupled with the emerging awareness of electronic functions and controls, sets a basis for a specialized software development process. An important enabler for this ‘agile’ process is the re-use of code and incremental testing with reviews. The history of the off-road machine business has been based on proven designs and long times between model updates. However, the worldwide adoption of the ISOBUS standard is poised to change this history. ISOBUS is not only establishing an open system for interoperability, it is establishing a sequence of features for diagnostics, sequenced operations, and information management. As customers discover these capabilities, they will expect them to be further advanced and customized for their specific needs. This requires adding agility into the proven durable processes so that manufacturers can respond faster to these growing needs. Electronics, and especially well-planned software systems, offer an agile technology for meeting this coming need. This paper presents the benchmarking of various embedded software development projects relating project content, project rigor, and quality. From this, insights into maintaining quality are gained in order to include agility into a durable development project. Also, risk and rewards of leveraging low cost country software development skills are addressed to stretch resources or even develop common resources for software systems