Data in agriculture Data in agriculture

AgMission Seeks Input on Standardized Data Use in Agricultural Research

Washington, D.C.

  • Agroecosystems

The Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research is issuing a Request for Information (RFI) that seeks input into  standardized data use in agricultural research, with a focus on climate-smart agriculture.

Existing data from agricultural research in the public and private sector is stored under a range of formats and standards, in various public repositories and systems or else held privately. As a result, the current wealth of agricultural data is fragmented and not easily accessible for new research to build upon or to guide development of decision support and educational tools for producers.

FFAR is issuing a RFI to explore investments that can increase the use of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data in agricultural research, with a specific emphasis on climate-smart mitigation and adaptation research related to the AgMission™ initiative. With sufficient volume of relevant standardized and interoperable data, agricultural sciences can apply advanced data analytics to address the challenges facing agricultural producers.

Portrait of Allison Thomson.
By gathering input on how to optimize agricultural data collection and storage, we can meet the urgency of the climate challenge by supporting all stakeholders – researchers, producers, NGOs, governments - with access to the information and tools needed to successfully deploy climate-smart practices consistently. Allison Thomson
Scientific Program Director
Sustaining Vibrant Agroecosystems

This RFI seeks input from relevant research and data communities that may cover some or all of the following topics:

  • Identifying and curating legacy data sets;
  • Establishing and promoting  specific standards, versioning and ontologies for climate relevant agricultural data to enable interoperability;
  • Promoting the FAIR data use among all data actors;
  • Designing and building and/or adapting a knowledge network or other navigation technology to identify and connect across diverse data sets and support queries relevant to climate-smart agriculture.

FFAR encourages comments from scientists studying agricultural systems and agronomic practices, experts in agricultural data or privacy, developers of metric and digital tools to support on-farm decision-making, and developers and managers of digital data repositories with agricultural and environmental data.

For more information, and to respond to this RFI, visit the Data Program Open Opportunity webpage. The deadline to submit comments is December 21, 2022.

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AgMission™

The Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR) and the World Farmers’ Organisation (WFO) established AgMission, a global collaboration of farmers, ranchers and scientists mobilizing data and partnering together to accelerate collaboration, develop science-based solutions and expand innovation and research that powers adaptation and adoption of climate-smart solutions. AgMission is empowering the agriculture sector to become net zero for greenhouse gas emissions.

To learn more visit: agmission.org