Seven Key Initiatives to Kick Off the New Year

Portfolio Update

Seven Key Initiatives to Kick Off the New Year

By Ben Craker, Portfolio Manager

Following a holiday season marked with year-end clean-up work, we spent our January getting ourselves and our volunteer members back up to speed on where things were left off and what the tasks need to be worked on to move the various AgGateway projects forward. As we rapidly slide into February, here is an overview of where things are for each of the active working groups.

  • WG04 and WG11 Modus lab test data: Right before the new end of the year the team completed work on a major upgrade to the soil method list that simplified units of measure and aligned the status of each entity to the recommendations of the Agrisementics working group. A subset of the team has now shifted to putting together a first draft of a new schema, this will combine what worked from the existing Modus schemas with some of the practical updates proposed by Purdue OATS, as well as trying to align with some similar work happening in UN/CEFACT.
  • WG12 PAIL is once again in crunch time working to make final edits and revisions to the draft irrigation and observation and measurement parts of the proposed international standard to submit to ISO for review by the end of this month.
  • WG20 Traceability API is working to pare down what all has been considered so far into an MVP release of the API focusing on planting data. The idea is to have it approved by Standards and Guidelines soon enough to allow time for anyone interested in doing an initial implementation prior to planting season for the bulk of the US Midwest market.
  • WG21 European Reporting Data ADAPT Mapping has been on hold. The current plan is to wait for version one of the ADAPT Standard to be released. At that point some of the regular ADAPT contributors will have a little more bandwidth to investigate the topic and have a more concrete understanding of some of the last details being hammered out for the ADAPT Standard. Many of the topics discussed so far in the working group will fit well as additions for the next release of the Standard since many are currently out of scope.
  • WG23 Weather Data API kicked off last month, holding its first meeting to confirm scope and deliverables and to put together an initial project plan and timeline. There is still time to join – if you are interested in participating, use this link and fill out the form.
  • WG24 Field Boundaries: GNSS Accuracy as a group has been quiet, but the leadership team has been busy in the background. Prior to the onset of the holidays the group developed a list of questions to gather some feedback from GNSS receiver technical experts to help inform the gaps the group has identified. The leadership team has been taking that list of questions to their contacts in the industry to capture feedback and insights. Once this feedback has been collected and organized, the working group will be getting back together to review and determine the next steps.
  • WG25 Dairy Feed Data Standards is a relatively new area for AgGateway. A lot of effort has gone into reaching out to organizations and companies that have not traditionally been involved in AgGateway projects. As a result, we have delayed officially kicking off this working group a little as there are several organizations in various stages of officially joining AgGateway or the working group and identifying who the right people are to participate. Once a few more of those groups are set up the first meeting will be scheduled. If you are interested and haven’t signed up yet there is still time, please fill out the form here.

So, while things may have slowed down a little over the holiday season, January was a productive month for getting working groups back up and running. Several are on pace to wrap up in the next couple months with a few more identified that will spin up toward the end of Q1, so be on the lookout for the next call to participate. And as usual if you have any questions on the activities of any of these working groups, an idea for a new group, or want to get engaged feel free to contact me (ben.craker@aggteway.org), or sign up for a working group here.