Since its creation in 2016, the FoodOn ontology has become an interconnected partner in
various academic and government inter-agency ontology work spanning agricultural and
public health domains. This paper examines existing and potential data interoperability
capabilities arising from FoodOn and partner food-related ontologies belonging to the
encyclopedic Open Biological and Biomedical Ontology Foundry (OBO) vocabulary
platform, and how research organizations and industry might utilize them for their own
operations or for data exchange. Projects are seeking standardized vocabulary across all
direct food supply activities ranging from agricultural production, harvesting, preparation,
food processing, marketing, distribution and consumption, as well as indirectly, within health,
economic, food security and sustainability analysis and reporting tools. To satisfy this
demand and provide data requires establishing domain specific ontologies whose curators
coordinate closely to produce recommended patterns for food system vocabulary
