We believe that for a data revolution to happen, agriculture and food need a fabric of interoperable and interplaying infrastructure layers. Having such an infrastructure in place, will make data sharing and exchange as natural to us, as it is to use the road or rail infrastructure to move from one country to another. This may become possible by the creation of a common data ecosystem, where diverse stakeholders (from smallholders to multinational conglomerates) will both build and use the infrastructures that will propel the industry forward.
Some months ago, Syngenta (with GODAN’s assistance) commissioned Dean Allemang to write a discussion paper that would try to catalyse consensus around what form a global data ecosystem might take, how it could bring value to key players, what cultural changes might be needed to make it a reality, and finally what technology might be needed to support it.
The discussion paper on A Global Data Ecosystem for Agriculture and Food was officially presented on September 16th, during the GODAN Annual Summit in New York.
GODAN invited four key organisations engaged in developing data infrastructures (CGIAR, Agrimetrics, ODI and Agroknow) to provide their responses as part of this discussion paper, stating what a common data ecosystem means to them.
In Agroknow’s response paper (Can Europe lead a data revolution in agriculture and food?), we state our belief that the transition of agriculture and food into a highly innovative industry, powered and disrupted by data and digital services, is inevitable. And we explain why we feel that Europe is uniquely positioned to lead and accelerate such a data revolution.
