Data Interoperability — A Key to Smart Agriculture

May 22, 2023

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5 min read

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Data sharing is one of the core foundations for agricultural technologies and digital innovations to scale and make a powerful impact. Unfortunately, agriculture has its fair share of challenges regarding data sharing. Data interoperability is the missing link that can make data sharing easier and create value out of it.

This article will take you through data sharing challenges and the role of data interoperability to address them.

Challenges

Collection, organization, storage, and management of agriculture data are humongous tasks due to their sheer volume and variability across geographies.
Inconsistency in type, quality and standardization of data.
Ambiguity in legal ownership of farming land and data (farmer, landowner, technology provider or owner of data sharing device?)
The reluctance of farmers to share their data due to ignorance, privacy, confidentiality, or lack of transparency and incentivization.
Data sharing requires pooling of resources and tools at various levels which can be an expensive and time-consuming affair.
The unwillingness of industry players to invest in data-sharing technologies due to low returns or longer pay-off periods.
Irresponsible data sharing due to a lack of data security standards, ethics, and legal regulations

Meaning of Data Interoperability

Data interoperability in agriculture refers to the ability of various agricultural platforms, applications, devices, and other computerized systems to share, communicate, use, and analyze data seamlessly and efficiently.

This interoperability is irrespective of the type of users, applications, databases, app developers, or device manufacturers. Interoperability enables data exchange in a way that users can interpret it easily.

Benefits of Data Interoperability in Agriculture — The advantages of interoperability are numerous:

1. Access Different Types of Data

Farmers, governments, startups, researchers, financial institutions, and other stakeholders can access different types of data on weather, soil, crop, water, fertilizers, seeds, market, land records, transaction records, credit scores, etc. at their fingertips. They will not have to run from pillar to post to fetch and aggregate agriculture data.

Interoperability will also help the stakeholders to manage their resources effectively and maximize the profitability of the ecosystem.

2. Make Informed Decisions

Farmers can make better and more informed decisions about pest control, crop management, and other agricultural practices. Agtech startups can leverage interoperability to develop better technologies and innovations. Financial institutions can use interoperability for the financial inclusion of farmers and improve digital lending agility in the agriculture sector.

Interoperability can give actionable insights to policymakers to design a robust regulatory framework for the sector. Investors can use interoperability to evaluate agtech startups more efficiently before investment.

3. Improve Efficiency in the Food Value Chain

Interoperability makes quality and standard data available consistently and effortlessly. This helps all stakeholders in the food value chain to analyse the root cause of problems objectively and act swiftly to take preventive or curative measures. So, the overall efficiency of the value chain gets a big boost.

Improved efficiency also lowers cost, effort, and time in the workflow processes across the value chain. It will also amplify transparency and traceability which is crucial to tackle the food security crisis and reduce food wastage in the value chain.

4. Higher Accuracy for Precision Agriculture

The success of precision agriculture relies heavily on data from multiple technologies such as drones, yield monitors, soil sensors, satellite imagery, and Geographical Positioning System (GPS).

Interoperability ensures that farmers and other stakeholders can capture data from all sources and analyse them accurately and intelligently. The risk of errors will be less which is a crucial factor for precision farming.

Achieving Data Interoperability in Agriculture

While interoperability will undoubtedly transform data sharing in the agriculture sector in a big way, there is still a long way to go. There are three ways to achieve data interoperability and unlock its potential:

Establish common protocols, standards, data field structures, and language frameworks for agricultural data sharing through open data platforms, APIs, and data exchange frameworks.

For example, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has been encouraging the use of AGROVOC, a relevant linked open dataset about agriculture which is available for public use. It facilitates interoperability through 40 900+ concepts and 984 000+ agricultural terms in up to 42 languages!

Develop a unified interoperability service offering that creates alliances instead of competition to benefit the entire agriculture ecosystem.
Collaboration between all stakeholders to develop data-sharing agreements and governance frameworks to ensure data privacy, security, and ownership without compromising transparency and traceability.

Conclusion

The agriculture sector is sitting on an untapped data goldmine which can be a game-changer to make the sector resilient, innovative, and sustainable. Interoperability can introduce a common data language to create a more integrated and connected agricultural ecosystem. The opportunities for interoperability are endless and they need to be harnessed as much as possible.

Syngenta Innovation Dialogues is part of the Shoots by Syngenta Accelerator initiative.

The Syngenta Group Startup Accelerator program, part of the larger “Shoots by Syngenta” platform, provides early-stage companies with a supportive #ecosystem to develop new #agriculture #technologies. It includes giving #startups the opportunity to pilot their technology at Syngenta’s Farm of the Future and select grower locations globally, mentorship from our business leaders, the ability to connect with industry experts, as well as resources and funding to accelerate their growth and impact.

At Syngenta Group, we believe in #innovation and #collaboration. If you think you have what it takes, then we have the platform for you!

The Shoots by Syngenta Program is managed for Syngenta by Excelerate.

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