Sketching Out Systematic Approaches

The United States Department of Agriculture recently announced it will be investing $300 million over eight years in a GHG Quantification effort to improve data, models and tools needed for estimating the impact of conservation practices on GHG emissions and carbon sequestration. USDA has established seven collaborative work streams to help develop the effort.

Two USDA workstreams will be engaged in this event: the “Soil Carbon Monitoring and Research Network with an above-ground perennial biomass component” workstream led by Dr. Skye Wills, National Leader, Soil Science Research as well as the “Data Management Infrastructure & Capacity” workstream led by Laura Morton, Data Scientist, both with the National Soil Survey Center, USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service.

To assist USDA in initial designs for their “Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Quantification Program,” Purdue Open Ag Technology and Systems Center (OATS) and Farm Foundation are hosting the Building Beta Data Management Protocols for Soil Carbon GHG Quantification virtual “event storming” will take place on October 24, 2023.

The “event storming” will sketch out a systematic approach that considers, among other elements:

• Agile and interactive processes
• Continuous improvement feedback loops
• External (beyond USDA) engagement with various groups and users
• Data interoperability
• Data access and privacy
• Data statutory compliance
• Published protocols and transparent documentation

Who Should Attend?

This event is best suited for experienced individuals who take part in soil data analytics, greenhouse gas modeling in agriculture, large data set management and data analytics architectures, interoperability of data systems related to soil and natural resources, and data sovereignty issues.

To help focus the event, the scope on October 24 will focus solely on soil carbon measurement and look to leverage existing data management tools such as COMET-Farm, DayCent, and the MODUS soil data standard.

The objective of the October 24th session is to develop a blueprint for a minimal viable beta set of protocols that can be rapidly co-developed in early 2024 through a virtual hackathon or “collabathon.” The people and entities involved in this event have a proven ability to rapidly hack tech solutions on this topic and are pleased to continue working together to support USDA’s efforts.

Registrants will be provided the option to take part as an active “participant” or a passive “observer.” We ask that “participants” take part in the entire event storming activity. The event storming will consist of an online Zoom event as well as the use of a Miro virtual whiteboard. You do not need prior experience with Miro to participate.

Participants will work on four themed focus areas:  1. Field Data Collection; 2. In the Soil Lab; 3. Feeding the Models; and 4. Meta Data Management.

Questions?

For more information please contact Rob Trice at rob@mixingbowlhub.com or Katie Grimble at katie@mixingbowlhub.com. Registration related questions can be directed to events@farmfoundation.org.

A Continuation of Collaborative Work on “Fixing the Soil Health Tech Stack”

In 2022, an assemblage of thought leaders came together and co-developed an “Eight Step Action Plan to Fix the Soil Health Tech Stack Now” that aligns with challenges the USDA faces in developing its approach to a GHG quantification effort. Participants included representatives from AgGateway, Colorado State University, Farm Foundation, Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR), The Mixing Bowl, OpenTEAM, Point Blue Conservation Science, Purdue Open Ag Technology Center, Semios, Skidmore College & The Soil Inventory Project, Syngenta, the Soil Health Institute and TomKat Ranch.

Led by Purdue OATS, we held a virtual “Soil Data Hack” on a data set of over 1000 soil samples that had been collected and analyzed for total percent carbon by dry combustion at three separate analytical laboratories along with other soil data. Purdue OATS had put all of the data into the MODUS data standard to define data terminology, metadata and file transfer formats.

Within two days, the hackers took the MODUS-based soil data and turned it into a JSON format; fed the data into a business intelligence and data visualization system (Power BI); pulled it into OpenTEAM‘s open source FarmOS FMIS; leveraged FarmOS to associate soil data to GPS lat/long; used RDF (a World-Wide Web Consortium standard data description and exchange format) to put soil data on the blockchain and make it available for Regen Network’s carbon credit program; linked the MODUS data to any HTML browser for visualization; and used HTML to compare different soil data.

We are pleased to reconvene on October 24, 2023 to design a blueprint that we can build in 2024 towards advancing the data infrastructure necessary for the development of a national Soil Carbon Monitoring Network.

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What is data interoperability?

Data interoperability is the ability to exchange and make use of data between devices and systems. When systems interoperate, the infrastructure in place for innovations that matter and system users, programmers, and others don’t get bogged down in trying to make each systems “talk” with each other.  

Common data field structures and language frameworks enable us to capture, communicate and analyze information shared between computers and applications. Existing frameworks of interoperable descriptive languages are used in myriad ways to communicate information between online parties.

Addressing data interoperability in agriculture

In agriculture, interoperable descriptive languages and data formats are not very common today. The main barrier to the digitization of food and agriculture has been the lack of commonly shared structural and semantic interoperability. In many parts of the supply chain, companies are already maintaining expensive databases and collecting large amounts of ultimately disparate data. The industry is full of single point solutions that get particular types of data from point A to point B, but lacks the framework to connect those solutions and bring all that data together in a way that maintains data sovereignty and appropriate confidentiality. 

Additionally, there are compliance and regulatory challenges that must be met across the supply chain and there are a host of industry-specific claims (e.g. attestation of claims for animal health, water quality, labor, etc.). By building on a framework that enables automation and validation through interoperable tools, we can significantly reduce the compliance burden.  

An open source framework allows for the most useful tools to be developed that can then be made available to actors throughout the supply chain, giving them access to important innovations that help them more cost-effectively and efficiently manage, maintain and productively use their data—which makes that data much more valuable.   

Our work

As a first phase, we are actively working to solve a number of data gaps in the pork supply chain that have the potential to improve efficiency, profitability, transparency or sustainability. We held an event storming in November 2020 that identified some of these gaps, and in March 2021 we co-hosted our first hackathon to develop prototype open source code to address one such gap: modeling an “Advance Ship Notification” (ASN) for pigs via the Trellis API Framework as a two-way, real-time communication channel coordinating a farmer shipping pigs, a trucker hauling pigs, and a processor receiving pigs. Peek under the hood and see what’s been done so far in GitHub.

Additionally, we are applying the model developed for the pork industry to address data interoperability in the regenerative ranching space. Our latest event storming, The Regenerative Ranching Data Round Up, identified challenges holding back efforts to align grazing practices with environmental goals. Challenges around soil data and its possible use in certification efforts will be the likely focus of our next Hackathon. Farm Foundation is seeking partners to help take that next step.

Future development of this and other coding solutions is planned, and we are currently seeking additional funding to sustain this effort. This highly technical work has the potential to make a real, practical impact on the way data is shared across the pork supply chain, while also developing a replicable model for other commodity sectors. Farm Foundation, as an objective force, is uniquely positioned to bring together people and resources from throughout the food and ag supply chain, aligned with the technical engineering capabilities to create real code that provides real solutions in a way that will positively impact all stakeholders.

Join the effort

If your organization is interested in partnering with us on this important work, please contact us.

The post Building Data Interoperability in Agriculture appeared first on Farm Foundation.

Session 1: Risks and Opportunities of Digital Agriculture for Environmental Conservation

The session focus covered the changing landscape of technology and agriculture, with a particular focus on both the risks and opportunities of technology for conservation. This broad focus set the stage for our additional sessions and anticipate potential policy implications and discussions. Panelist for this session included: Charles Baron, Chief Innovation Officer and Co-Founder Farmers Business Network and Jason Weller, Vice President of Truterra Land O’Lakes. The conversation was facilitated by Kathy Baylis from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Session 2: Conservation Implementation and Policy Perspectives

This session brought together leaders across the agricultural technology and conservation sectors with those working in the policy arena discussing agri-environmental policies, barriers or constraints to making them work, and how so-called big data or digital agriculture can potentially serve to overcome those barriers. Issues of data privacy, data-use limitations, and safe harbor considerations were also considered. Panelist included: Steve Hagen, Co-Founder, Chief Operating Officer and Senior Scientist Dagan, Inc., Alyssa Charney, Legislative Assistant for Sen. Bob Casey, D-PA and Sarah Beebout, National Program Leader-Sustainable Intensification USDA Agricultural Research Service, Office of National Programs. The conversation was facilitated by Jonathan Coppes from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Session 3: Mobilizing Data for Conservation: On- and Off-Farm Perspectives

The session addressed interplay between on-farm and off-farm elements of platforms to practice digital agriculture. A diverse set of panelists included Christy Slay, Director, Technical Alignment with the Sustainability Consortium, and Andrew Nelson, Farmer and Software Engineer, Nelson Farms, Inc., and Silver Creek Farms, Inc., who, among others, provided the perspectives of a producer, an upstream input supply perspective, and a downstream food industry processor/retailer perspective on questions and topics such as how farmers and agribusiness can be supported by the public sector, and vice versa; the risks of public and private complementarity; the infrastructure necessary to scale and scope, including the digital infrastructure and enabling conditions. This session, as the others, continued to look at these issues with a lens focused on policy opportunities. The conversation was facilitated by Steven Wolf of Cornell University.

Session 4: Research Opportunities

This session opened with a wrap-up discussion, building upon the momentum of the prior workshop sessions, and led into breakout sessions focused on topics of interest so that collaborators had the chance to discuss opportunities for further action and research.

This session was intended to be a working, collaborative opportunity for researchers and policy experts to network and plan opportunities for further action and research.

The digital workshops were a huge success with more than 150 participants in each session. The collaboration amongst panelists and participants was beneficial to the conversation about the future of digital agriculture and conservation.

The post Advancing Digital Agriculture and Conservation appeared first on Farm Foundation.

This session is part of What’s on the Horizon for E-Connectivity in Rural America, a project organized by Farm Foundation, in collaboration with CoBank, NTCA-The Rural Broadband Association, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, the National Rural Utilities Cooperative Finance Corporation, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The four listening sessions in this project focused on identifying the challenges rural communities now face in providing quality broadband services, as well as the innovative options being used to address those challenges.

Two panel of regional leaders discussed e-connectivity needs and the partnerships and solutions now being used to enhance broadband services in rural communities. Panelists were: Randy Wheelock, Commissioner in Clear Creek County, Colorado; Brian Shepherd, COO of Colorado Broadband Office; Brian Tagaban, Director of Governmental Policy with Sacred Wind Communications Inc.; Jon Saunders, COO of SECOM, a division of Southeast Colorado Power Association; and David Shipley, General Manager of Rye and South Park Telephone Company.

Comments and discussions from all the sessions will be the basis for a report to be provided to federal and state public and private leaders to better inform their decisions regarding improvements to, and expansion of, broadband services in rural America.

More than 225 people–including 175 viewing the live webcast–participated in the Aug. 16, 2018, listening session in Birmingham, Ala. This session was at the Alabama Center for Advanced Technology and Training on the campus of Lawson State Community College, Birmingham, Ala. View the entire session at THIS LINK.

The Alabama session began with comments from Anshu Vaish, CEO of Robin Health, Macon, Ga., and Alabama farmer Will Gilmer of Gilmer Dairy Farms. A second panel discussed specific challenges and opportunities for improving e-connectivity in the region. Panelists were: Fred Johnson, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Farmers Telecommunications Cooperative, Rainsville, Ala.; Jake Cowen, Chief Financial Officer of Troy Cable in Troy, Ala.; and Steve Foshee, President/CEO of Tombigbee Electric Cooperative, Hamilton, Ala. Open mix sessions were provided after each panel. The listening session concluded with an update from Washington, D.C., by Jannine Miller, Senior Advisor for Rural Infrastructure at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The second session was June 19, 2018, in Faribault, Minn. Video of that session is available. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai joined executives from the five partner organizations April 18, 2018, in Washington, D.C., to kick off the listening sessions. Perdue and Pai both highlighted the importance of e-connectivity to all sectors of rural America.

At the Upper Midwest Listening Session June 19, 2018, in Faribault, MN, about 50 people provided perspectives on the availability of service and options for delivery. Bill Esbeck, Executive Director of the Wisconsin State Telecommunications Association, joined Steve Fenske, Attorney and Government Relations Manager with the Minnesota Association of Townships, to discuss e-connectivity needs in the Upper Midwest.

“Access to broadband is critically important for the economic viability and sustainability of rural communities. This listening session was a great opportunity to share the accomplishments of small, rural broadband providers across Wisconsin. The rural providers I represent are continuously reinvesting in their broadband networks and closing the digital divide,” said Esbeck. “Conversations like these among diverse stakeholders allow us to develop a greater understanding of the issues, explore solutions and showcase what has worked so these efforts may be replicated to the benefit of rural communities across the nation.”

Innovative solutions now being used to deliver broadband were discussed by three Minnesota officials: Kristi Westbrock, CEO/General Manager of Consolidated Telephone Company (CTC) of Brainerd, MN; Danna MacKenzie, Executive Director of the Minnesota Office of Broadband Development; and Brian Zelenak, CEO of the Mille Lacs Energy Cooperative, Aitkin, MN.

CTC partners with and provides fiber optic services to a number of surrounding communities. “At CTC we see firsthand how much value broadband holds for the rural communities we serve,” says Westbrock. “Partnerships can play a vital role in achieving creative solutions to the challenges of building quality broadband across our nation. Engaging in this discussion is an important step, not only to bring awareness, but also to build on the foundation for achieving robust, sustainable broadband throughout rural Minnesota.”

“Enhancing the quality of life throughout our communities is our priority,” said Zelenak. “Broadband spurs economic growth in rural communities and opens the door to modern education, healthcare and telework options. We’re proud to help modernize our local economy by making broadband internet a possibility for our members.”

With these experts and the other rural stakeholders attending, the goal of the Farm Foundation is to identify the challenges rural communities now face in providing quality broadband services, as well as the innovative options being used to address those challenges. We want to hear from the people who live and work with limited broad band access today.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai joined executives from the five partner organizations April 18 in Washington, D.C., to kick off the listening sessions. Perdue and Pai both highlighted the importance of e-connectivity to all sectors of rural America.

“Broadband is vital to the rural economy in what is now a highly interconnected global marketplace,” said Tom Halverson, President and CEO of CoBank. “We need leaders on both sides of the aisle in Washington to work together to facilitate broadband investment and ensure that rural America remains competitive and strong.”

Achieving e-connectivity across rural America is not a simple task. “Actions needed to improve e-connectivity vary widely by community and region,” notes Cullman. “These listening sessions will serve to highlight common issues, success stories to build strong broadband systems, and challenges that are yet to be met.”

Executives from regional telecommunications companies participated in the April 18 session,  to provide perspectives on the broadband service issues. The panel included Levoy Knowles of the Tennessee Telecommunications Association, Mel Coleman of the North Arkansas Electric Cooperative, and Ken Johnson, Administrator of Rural Development’s Rural Utilities Service.

“We are excited for the prospects of enhanced cooperation and coordination between USDA, the FCC, and private operators like those in NTCA’s membership–all of whom recognize the value of and critical need for sustainable broadband in rural America.” said NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield. “NTCA’s nearly 850 members connect many of America’s rural communities to the world with robust broadband, and we are pleased to participate in this collaborative effort to promote better access to rural broadband.”

Rural electric cooperatives are well aware of the needs of e-connectivity in their communities, and more than 100 electric cooperatives already are providing broadband service to their members. “The widening digital divide is a national crisis deserving of a national response,” said Jim Matheson, CEO of NRECA. “For decades, electric cooperatives have enhanced the quality of life throughout rural America. Now, many of those same electric co-ops are helping reinvigorate rural economies by bringing broadband to rural homes, businesses and farms. High costs to serve areas with low population density remain the biggest obstacle to expanded rural broadband access. An expanded combination of federal grant and loan funding through USDA is a critical step to connecting rural America.”

At the April 18, 2018, event, stakeholders emphasized the need for collaborative efforts to enhance broadband services in rural America. “Leveraging additional investment in rural broadband infrastructure will require a team effort,” said Sheldon Petersen, CEO of CFC. “Local partnerships can be a wonderful way to leverage resources, expertise and efficiencies to ensure that rural communities can fully participate in today’s 21st century economy.” 

The post What’s on the Horizon for E-Connectivity in Rural America appeared first on Farm Foundation.

Six papers were commissioned for the workshop. A seventh paper, authored by Anthony Homan, was previously published but was included in the workshop because of its high relevance to the topic. The findings and opinions expressed in the papers are those of the authors and do not represent those of Farm Foundation or ERS.  Farm Foundation gratefully acknowledges BNSF Railway for its support of the commissioned papers.  The papers are available below, along with a summary of the findings.

Economically Efficient Composition of Rural Infrastructure Investment
Authors: Mark Burton of the University of Tennessee, and Wesley Wilson of the University of Oregon
Full Paper
Farm Foundation Issue Report summary
Workshop Powerpoint

Economic Impacts, Costs and Benefits of Infrastructure Investment: Lessons from the Literature
Authors: John Pender of USDA’s Economic Research Service, and Max Torero of the World Bank.
Full Paper
Farm Foundation Issue Report summary
Workshop PowerPoint

Infrastructure Project Prioritization in Theory and Practice: Examples in Federal U.S. and International Programs
Authors: Mike Bennon and Rajiv Sharma, both of Stanford University
Full Paper
Farm Foundation Issue Report summary
Workshop PowerPoint

Rank and Selection of Infrastructure Projects: A State and Local Perspective
Authors: David Tanner of the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at the University of Georgia, and Kent Wolfe of the University of Georgia
Full Paper
Farm Foundation Issue Report summary
Workshop PowerPoint

Value of Rural and Urban Public Infrastructure
Authors: David Albouy of the University of Illinois, and Arash Farahani of the Independent Budget Office of New York City
Full Paper
Farm Foundation Issue Report summary
Workshop PowerPoint

Impacts of the USDA Broadband Loan and Grant Programs: Moving Toward Estimating a Rate of Return
Farm Foundation Issue Report summary
Authors: Mitch Renkow and Ivan Kandilov, both of North Carolina State University
Full Paper
Farm Foundation Issue Report summary
Workshop PowerPoint

Examining Benefit-Cost Analysis in Infrastructure Projects (previously published)
Author: Anthony Homan, Federal Maritime Commission
Full Paper
Workshop PowerPoint

The workshop was an opportunity to review the best available evidence and chart a path towards producing practical research on the economic returns of investments in rural infrastructure, including highways, bridges, railways, broadband, electrical systems, and water and sewer systems.

“A current approach to rank and select rural infrastructure projects is evaluating expected returns on investment (ROI). But  relatively little was known about the economic or social returns on infrastructure investments,” says Farm Foundation President Constance Cullman. “Some studies looked at infrastructure relative to productivity or GDP, but very few had assessed ROI or looked specifically at rural infrastructure investments. This type of information is needed to help public and private leaders make decisions about infrastructure investments.”

Workshop participants, including the authors of the seven commissioned papers, examined what is known about ROI on infrastructure improvements, identified gaps in the knowledge base, and assessed how this information can be used in future investment decision making by public- and private-sector leaders.

Workshop participants included university researchers, government agency representatives, private consultants, community leaders, and experts in the economic assessment process used by international development organizations for project funding.

The workshop was at the National Press Club, Washington, D.C.

17-04 

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