365FarmNet, Aarhus University, AGCO, AgroIntelli, CNH Industrial, GRIMME, Kverneland, and Wageningen University and Research have announced important steps forward towards real interoperability between farm machines, sensors and software. Interoperability is a key issue in the advancement of digital farming.
The Internet of Things (IoT) has great potential to increase the efficiency of agriculture. Currently, products from different manufacturers do not speak the same language and therefore cannot exchange information, thereby limiting their value. If, for example, the data collected by a combine harvester cannot be read by the farm’s computer system, it is of no value in terms of supporting their management decisions. The companies and organizations listed above have teamed up to work together on the Internet of Food and Farm 2020 Project to overcome this problem and design the future of connectivity in agriculture.
Using the ADAPT framework, the partners have demonstrated how data can be exchanged between agricultural equipment and software platforms from different brands in a standardized format. This is an important enabler for the flow of data required to make “digital farming” or “Agriculture 4.0” a success. With a simple software plug-in, software companies and equipment manufacturers will be able to read data from different sources, drastically reducing development time while at the same time increasing available data streams. Easier data exchange will ultimately lead to improved decision making and more productive farming.
ADAPT is an open source software toolkit from AgGateway, based on a universal data model that enables translation between different proprietary data formats. The proof of concept was demonstrated at the IoF2020 stakeholder event in Almeria, Spain.
With this demonstration, the partners have confirmed their commitment to an open and interoperable system, where data can flow seamlessly between different value chain participants. For farmers, it will be possible to use different types and brands of equipment with a wide variety of software or services, regardless of manufacturer.
The next step in the process of increased interoperability includes real time and bi-directional vehicle-cloud communication. For this, the team will build on existing standards and work together with the AEF (Agricultural Industry Electronics Foundation).
