Aiding On-Farm Decisions Through Connections to Data & Knowledge:
Agriculture can heavily rely on technology, especially as the sector is rapidly becoming more data driven. More farmers are using technology, whether it is a spreadsheet for farm management or a decision support tool, to understand how their farm is doing and how it might be impacting the environment around them. These tools and systems are often disconnected from each other, causing additional burdens and duplication of information for farmers and their trusted advisors.
Through OpenTEAM, key agricultural stakeholders are collaborating to build connectivity across systems, tools and data.
Research Built Infrastructure to Connect Technologies & Increase Access to Data:
With Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR) funding, OpenTEAM launched in 2019 to create an open-source technology ecosystem that enables farmer-control of data, knowledge sharing and access to programs and marketplace incentives through increased interoperability between various tools, functions and data.
The community establishes shared data frameworks and technical specifications for community-driven solutions that make data collection, sharing and analysis the most functional for farmers and ranchers. This includes building shared technical backend infrastructure and working with developers to provide the building blocks that can be utilized in farmer-facing platforms. Through this, the OpenTEAM community enables a system of connected technologies across the agricultural sector that allows farmers to enter data once and use it many times, increasing access to agricultural knowledge and fostering data sovereignty for farmers. This work is crucial in supporting farmers’ journeys toward implementing more regenerative practices that support agriculture’s transition to a more sustainable food system.