Much of the innovation in farming today is around what they call precision agriculture. Precision ag means using data across farming processes to manage the business. It's like bringing industrial control to agriculture. You could also say it's about bringing real-time, data-based management to farming.
There are many precision ag products and services out there. But: “Farmers and others agree on the need for some sort of industry body that will define and govern the standards our industry should follow when it comes to data platforms.” There are two groups working on standards, one which seems to come at the problem from the systems point of view and one that runs under an open data banner. Of course these two viewpoints are not incompatible – they could just represent different starting points, one inspired by current offerings from vendors and the other by users.
The pattern of an industry becoming more centered on data and then seeking to build out standards is familiar from other domains. I guess the difference industries are dealing with today, in comparison with even five years ago, is the growth of cloud services. It's easier to sign up with a cloud service than to trial an out-of-the-box solution. The economics look a whole lot better and there's less apparent risk of lock-in. However, until a community agrees its core business data standards, users of these services face potential difficulties with shifting their data from one service provider to another.
I'd like cloud service providers to take a more proactive approach to industry standards. I know this hardly looks like it would be in their interests. They want to offer agnostic services and they're not in the business of helping customers move to other suppliers. But as the cloud services business matures, customers will be looking for value-add. It doesn't cost much for a cloud service provider to say “we recommend and support the industry data standards from XYZ”. Doing so would show some added customer orientation on their part. Most importantly, promotion of industry standards grows the entire business for everyone involved. There's market share – and there's helping to grow the market. Ag Industry
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