ICPA 2016 Introduction

Field operations such as planting, irrigation and harvest occur as part of a grower’s business processes. These processes tend to vary greatly among different growers, but there is value in trying to define a core set that is pertinent to all (or most). To that effect, and in order to support the implementation of quality management systems for production agriculture, the ISO Standard 22006 provides a list of processes and sub-processes involved in crop production.

Crop production processes must be supported with data exchange, both for coordination among the different actors directly involved in each process, and for communication with consumers of information such as trade partners and regulatory agencies.

A major problem in agriculture, however, is a lack of standard formats for this data exchange. A well-respected standard, ISO11783-10, exists for communication between

machine and implement control systems (MICS) in the field and
farm management information systems (FMIS).

Whereas that standard provides a comprehensive format for representing data being exchanged with machines such as tractors, sprayers and combines, there are a few limitations associated with this format:

It is limited to MICS-FMIS communication. It is not well-suited for FMIS-FMIS transactions that may involve additional information (e.g., a recommendation from an agronomist, or data needed to complete a regulatory report) that is not machine-specific and therefore not covered by the ISO11783-10 format.
It initially supported locally-scoped identifiers only.
It is not well-suited for some field operations such as irrigation with center pivots, where irrigated areas have complex geometries
Adoption of the ISO format is not yet universal, and there exist a multitude of proprietary formats for machinery and FMIS that are inherently incompatible with it.

The lack of interoperability is not just a problem of a lack of a common format or syntax for field operations data. There is also a lack of a shared understanding, or semantics, among the different industry actors involved in field operations. This can take the form of using different names to denote the same thing, or the same name to denote different things. Some anecdotal examples:

Agreeing on the meaning of the word “field” is often difficult;
The names “task”, “job”, and “work order” have often been used interchangeably, but mean subtly different things for different manufacturers.

There is also a lack of shared meaning in the identification of products such as seed, crop protection, and equipment. When two actors exchange, say, a report of product usage, [complete]

[Example: Identification of Seed and Crop Protection Products]

In many jurisdictions in the world, seed and crop protection products must be used in strict accordance with requirements specified in their label: genetically-modified varieties often require refuges to prevent the development of pest resistance, chemicals may have strict application protocols including personal protective equipment, maximum allowed active ingredient loads, and so forth. In a context where application data for these products is being exchanged, it is of paramount importance that the products be identified unambiguopusly. Reality does not support this requirement, however.

Many forms of equipment do not support unique identifiers for products
There are multiple companies that provide product label data in the marketplace, but each uses its own proprietary identifiers, its own proprietary format for representing the data, and its own proprietary delivery mechanism or application programming interface (API).

First Steps

There have been efforts in the direction of providing common formats for interoperability. For example, the FODM (Field Operations Data Model), a proprietary data model and set of format conversion tools (macy, 2002), is still widely used today. It is, however, proprietary, not specifically ISO-compatible, and does not include all of the documents used in production agriculture.

In this context, AgGateway created its Precision Agriculture Council in 2010, This group, which as grown to represent ofer 100 companies in the agriculture industry, started working along 4 distinct lines:

An ag glossary, meant to bring together agricultural terminology from different sources, and meant as an educational resource and discussion-support tool. (Currently residing at www.agglossary.org)
An interest in reference data, and the problem of developing a distributed system of identification for products.
A Field Operations Working Group, which brought together the companies that were interested in field operations interoperability and
A Telematics and Asset Management Working Group, for those parties interested in the non-task-specific management of fixed and mobile assets.

The Field Operations Working Group eventually chartered a series of projects, SPADE1, and SPADE2, which dealt with various field operations and with reference data; the SPADE3 project subsequently included a telematics component, called WAVE. Additional work from the AgXML Consortium

The Development Process

Example user Stories

Non-mechanical harvest

Processes and the Documents that Support them

BPMN. Show one from harvest

Documents

Docume