(SPRINGFIELD, OH) – The development of a secure, online repository where farmers can store, manage and control the information generated on their farms took a major step forward as the Agricultural Data Coalition (ADC) initiated its pilot to demonstrate how a neutral repository of data would work to connect data among growers, service providers, and machines.
A group of growers, service providers, and university researchers from different parts of the country, representing numerous commodities, are participating in the testing phase to offer feedback on pace and direction for ADC’s data bank before it is officially offered to the entire farming community.
“This is an exciting phase for ADC, and underlines that a focused approach to solving key basic data challenges in appreciated” explained Matt Bechdol, the ADC’s interim executive director.
Bechdol described the new repository like a bank. Farmers deposit, or upload, data to a secure cloud where they can organize, manage, and share it. When farmers want to share information – with service providers, insurance agents, researchers, input providers or farm managers, for example – they authorize ADC to transmit it with the click of a button. Service providers can also make deposits with the grower’s permission.
(INDIANAPOLIS) – Staying true to its core principle that farmers should be in control of the data collected on their operations, the Agricultural Data Coalition (ADC) today announced the formation of a farmer advisory board.
The advisory board, which currently consists of 10 men and women, will help guide ADC as it develops a data management repository to house agricultural information.
“The full potential of our agricultural data is not currently being realized because of management, storage, portability and delivery challenges,” said Joe Luck, Assistant Professor and Precision Agriculture Engineer at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, a founding member of the ADC.
“The mission of the ADC is to build a farmer-friendly product that will aid farmers in getting the most out of the vast amounts of data they collect every day, and the expertise this group of producers brings to the coalition will prove to be essential to that mission’s success,” he added.
Advisory board members farm in seven states and raise crops ranging from corn and soybeans to cotton, sorghum, wheat and potatoes. This kind of diversity will help ensure that ADC is meeting the needs of all, explained Dr. Keith Coble of Mississippi State, another ADC founding member.
“As we go across the country and see different production systems for different commodities, we want to create tools that can be utilized for a broad set of needs,” said Coble, who is a W.L. Giles Distinguished Professor of Agricultural Economics at the school. “We are excited to have a diverse group of producers from across the Midwest, the Plains, the West and the South to provide invaluable insight into the unique needs of these different regions and their various crops.”
(INDIANAPOLIS) – The Agricultural Data Coalition (ADC) today announced its second new member this month, welcoming Ice Miller LLP as a founding member.
Ice Miller, a law firm with offices throughout the Midwest, boasts a large agricultural practice that represents equipment dealers, ag lenders, farmer-owned cooperatives, input providers, grain processors and more. In addition, the firm’s data security and privacy practice has extensive legal and real-world technological experience in dealing with cybersecurity issues and protecting user-data – a tenet of the ADC’s mission.
“Unlocking the potential of farm data is critical to future improvements in production agriculture,” explained Anthony Aaron, a partner at Ice Miller’s Indianapolis office and lead on Ice Miller’s ADC membership. “With that in mind, it will be important to ensure that ADC is structured to provide a safe and secure platform to store, analyze and make data available to farmers and their trusted research partners.”
Another Indiana organization, Purdue University, joined the ADC just prior to Ice Miller, adding to the diverse perspectives and vision of Founding Members. Officially launched in March at the Commodity Classic, the ADC is currently building a secure data storage repository that will enable farmers to easily control, manage and maximize the value of the information collected on their farms.
(WEST LAFAYETTE, IN) – Purdue University announced today that it has joined the Agricultural Data Coalition (ADC), a group recently formed to build a national repository where farmers can safely store and manage their farm’s production information.
Farmers collect valuable statistics every time they pass through their fields, and that data will be key to fueling future innovation and helping growers drive efficiency on their own farms. But its full potential has not been realized because of hurdles to housing and transmitting information in a uniform and usable way.
(NEW ORLEANS)—Thanks to precision agriculture and advancements in equipment and computing technology, America’s farmers are building a treasure trove of production information that will help fuel future innovation. A new organization announced today, the Agricultural Data Coalition (ADC), plans to help farmers better control, manage and maximize the value of their data.
The ADC is the result of years of planning and coordination by AGCO, the American Farm Bureau Federation, Auburn University, CNH Industrial, Crop IMS, The Ohio State University, Mississippi State University, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Raven Industries, and Topcon Positioning Group.
Its goal is to build a data repository where farmers can securely store and oversee the information collected by their tractors, harvesters, aerial drones and other devices. Over time, that data can then be scrubbed, synced and transmitted in an efficient and uniform way to third parties — whether they be researchers, crop insurance agents, government officials, farm managers, input providers or any trusted advisor the farmer chooses.
One of the most valuable commodities cultivated by farmers today is the information their tractors, harvesters and aerial drones collect.
For farmers, this data can be used to improve efficiency, simplify paperwork and potentially generate additional dollars to help supplement farm income. It will also enable continued food safety and affordability, innovative land and water stewardship and responsiveness to ever-changing consumer demands.
