Global groups collaborate on digital solutions

AgGateway and the Agricultural Industry Electronics Foundation have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to collaborate on initiatives to increase the seamless exchange of information in farm operations, supporting the goals of growers in managing and using farm data. The agreement allows the two global, non-profit organizations to share information as needed to pursue agreed-upon projects, and to share the rights for resources they develop together.

“The goal is to make it much easier for growers to rapidly access and use information to improve productivity and sustainability,” said AgGateway President and CEO Wendy Smith. “Growers use systems that span across field equipment, on-farm computer systems and cloud systems, but often data still cannot flow seamlessly across these systems and functions. This agreement – which builds on our existing collaborative relationship with AEF – will make it easier to address those challenges.”

“The 200 agriculture equipment manufacturers and electronic component suppliers of the AEF work to ensure that all of their brands are compatible with one another and with other systems, so that farmers may operate as efficiently as possible in the field,” said Peter van der Vlugt, AEF chair and general manager, Kubota Innovation Center Europe. “Collaborating with AgGateway and ensuring that we are in alignment will support those efforts and ultimately better serve our farmer customers.”

As a first initiative in their collaboration, AgGateway and AEF may consider ways to address load/unload events in field operations. Load/unload refers to the ability to track the movement of harvested crop from the combine to the grain cart, to the semi (at the edge of the field) to the grain elevator.

The two groups note that better use of standards – and thus connectivity for beneficial data flow – is needed between the supply chain and field operations. The same is true of data formats optimized for equipment, and data optimized for on-farm computer systems