2018 July Newsletter

July 2018   Volume 12  Number 6


  • Welcome new member:  Michael Larsen (individual)
  • Are you a seasoned AgGateway member who would enjoy giving a helping hand to a newcomer? Find out more on our one-hour mentoring webinar, Tuesday, July 24, 3:00 pm ET.
  • Check out the new case study webpage and contribute your company’s own case study.
  • Mark your calendar for the 2018 Annual Conference, Nov. 12-14, Austin, Texas


Mid-Year Meeting

Thanks for a Great Meeting!

By the AgGateway Conference Committee

We had a great Mid-Year Meeting in Iowa last month, starting with a lively and intriguing discussion of blockchain in agriculture with experts from Purdue University and Chronicled. This was followed by a variety of council and committee sessions where attendees tackled current initiatives and future planning. A successful Quick Connect session featured more than two dozen face-to-face meetings between trading partners implementing electronic connections. We also launched the new AgGateway's Member Portal, which allows members to maintain their personal or company profile, make council and committee elections, look up contact information of other AgGateway members, make online payments, and much more. Read more...


Resources

Let USDA Know if You Want Data via Web Services

By Wendy Smith, AgGateway President & CEO

The U.S. Department of Agriculture and AgGateway are collaborating on ways to enable U.S. growers and companies that serve them to transition to digital agriculture. One potential collaboration category is around providing USDA data via web services, with AgGateway offering web service API design assistance and a membership ready to implement support for consuming any web services the USDA may offer. To that end, AgGateway and the USDA would like to understand industry needs and would appreciate your input.

Please take the survey here. The survey has only 4 questions (other than such questions as your name and affiliation); it should only take a few moments to complete. Read more...


ADAPT

AgGateway Releases Brief Introductory Video on ADAPT

By Susan Ruland, AgGateway Communications Director

AgGateway has released a 2-minute introductory video that shares basic information on the AgGateway ADAPT Framework, an open source software project that is designed to simplify communication between growers, their machines and their partners. The video, which can be found at https://ADAPTFramework.org/adapt-videos, answers general questions about what ADAPT is and how it works. The goal of the video is to encourage software developers to adopt ADAPT within their products. Widespread use of the ADAPT framework will provide farmers with more choice in the systems they use while reducing costs for those systems to effectively "talk to each other". The framework was developed within the non-profit AgGateway forum as a collaborative industry project, in order to tackle the long-standing challenge of seamless communication between systems. Read more...


New Member Profile

Lagom Ag Helps Smallholder Farmers Leverage Data

By Evin Ellis, AGDATA

AgGateway welcomes Lagom Ag, a market strategy and business development group based in Portland, Oregon. Lagom is a Swedish word that means “just enough.” It fits the company’s philosophy of helping farmers use just enough water, just enough fertilizers, and just enough energy to be profitable, while ensuring the sustainability of limited resources.

The Lagom Ag Initiative was founded to help smallholder farmers, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, take advantage of digital agriculture. Its focus is on removing barriers for farmers so that they can effectively access and use weather, field and market data. This includes data for planning, operations and reporting/traceability. Read more...

AGIIS Update

Building for Tomorrow

By Josh Wall, AgGateway AGIIS Product Manager

AgGateway’s Ag Industry Identification System (AGIIS) has been a foundational building block for many eConnectivity implementations in the agricultural industry for more than a decade. Throughout this time, there have been minimal changes to the underlying technology of the service. Therefore, AgGateway has made the decision to move forward with a plan to modernize AGIIS, which will be completed in two phases. The first phase began June 1 and will finalize at the end of October. Phase 1 will incorporate the latest technology and upgrade the underlying framework to extend the features and functionality of the AGIIS platform moving forward. Read more...

Blockchain

Blockchain: Serialization and Proof of Existence

By Maurizio Greco, CTO, Chronicled

[This excerpt is taken from a blog Greco recently wrote that isn't specific to agriculture, but the parallels can be drawn fairly easily. See this link to read the full article, “Does Proof of Existence establish Provenance?”.]

Blockchain can deliver enormous value for enterprises. We are at the beginning of the journey and best practices need to be established. In this post, I talk about provenance, a problem that we might consider to solve with Proof of Existence, a popular blockchain-based primitive. I will also introduce a couple of alternative solutions to establishing provenance.

The language used for a problem statement might be misleading because it is formulated already from the point of view of a possible solution. As an example, I want to walk you through a problem that the regulator requires the supply chain of the pharmaceutical industry to solve. Read more...

In the News

AgGateway in the News

Coverage this month features the new ADAPT explainer video, as well as news from AgGateway members implementing ADAPT.

AgGateway Releases Introductory Video on ADAPT — Precision Farming Dealer, June 28, 2018 — The video, which can be found at https://ADAPTFramework.org/adapt-videos, answers general questions about what ADAPT is and how it works. The goal of the video is to encourage software developers to adopt ADAPT within their products. Widespread use of the ADAPT framework will provide farmers with more choice in the systems they use while reducing costs for those systems to effectively "talk to each other."


AgGateway Releases New Video Explaining Adapt Benefits Agri-Marketing, June 29, 2018 — AgGateway has released a 2-minute introductory video that shares basic information on the AgGateway ADAPT Framework, an open source software project that is designed to simplify communication between growers, their machines and their partners. The video, which can be found at https://ADAPTFramework.org/adapt-videos, answers general questions about what ADAPT is and how it works.


Premier Crop Systems Announces API Integration with Agvance ERP System Precision Farming Dealer, June 29, 2018 — Premier Crop Systems announced its API integration with Software Solutions Integrated (SSI) business management software called Agvance. This integration will simplify the workflow for Agriculture retailers that send summary information for variable-rate nutrient recommendations to Agvance for field application. The integration used a method established through many years of collaboration under the AgGateway umbrella.