In all of AgGateway's operations and activities, it must avoid discussions or conduct that might violate applicable antitrust laws, or even appear to do so. To that end, AgGateway has established Antitrust Guidelines, which it has provided to each participant in this meeting. While it is your ultimate responsibility to ensure that your actions comply with applicable antitrust laws, your participation in this meeting is affirmation that you will abide by AgGateway's guidelines.

Soil test data is the most commonly used data layer in digital agriculture. Soil composition and quality is a basis for many other agricultural recommendations and decisions, such as planting, irrigation and crop protection.

Automated data management, from work order generation, sample collection, drying analysis and result distribution, will improve labs’ efficiency and allow them to increase their sample throughput. In this competitive environment, the laboratories that can offer the best turnaround without compromising the quality of analysis are better positioned to gain market share and be more profitable.

A current working group (WG04 Ag Lab Data) have been working on using the MODUS model as a basis for a lab testing standard. While a LATAM representative has been part of the team, members of the AgGateway North American working group are much further ahead in their thinking on lab testing standards. Those in Latin America are at the beginning in their journey, even as WG04 is looking to extend their work into other regions and other lab testing areas, such as manure. LATAM members would be likely be unable to contribute very much to the discussion and grow frustrated if they joined the current WG04. Additionally, while the North American team has brought on partners and surveyed labs in their region, that foundational work has yet to be done in Latin America.

Many of the technical experts, upon whom Ronaldo relies, are not sufficiently proficient in English to conduct their work in that language. Discussion and meeting notes will have to be done in Portuguese.

Dan Berne (Unlicensed) provided an overview of the AgGateway Working Group Charter template.

Objectives

• Increase the speed and efficiency of soil testing labs to intake, process and report soil data analyses through a common data model.
• Promote and facilitate the information flow between lab certification organizations (i.e. Embrapa) and testing labs
• Support the Pronasolo model for soil data interoperability

Scope:

• In-Scope: Soil testing data, including sampling methods, soil properties, testing methods and results.
• The approach will leverage the work already being done by WG04, including the use of the MODUS model and the observations data model. The initial focus will be on labs in Brazil.

Out of Scope:

• Non-soil testing, such as manure, water quality, plant tissue, fertilizer product, etc. These may be included in subsequent working groups.

Deliverables:

1. Documentation of the specific requirements for a soil testing data standard for Brazil.
2. Regionally customized version of the WG04 BPMN
3. Regional version of the MODUS standard, including object models (e.g. additional data registries)
4. Survey of labs to identify current methods and datasets
5. JSON schema and open API (specifics); specifics to be determined
6. Communication plan and materials
7. Summary reports/meeting in English to PMC every three months

Wed March 3; 11:30 Chicago time