Data pipeline will save farmers from endless keypunching

This is the message from Rezare Systems managing director Andrew Cooke.

Data Linker is a technical way for organisations to share data, with permission from the farmers involved for that data to flow, says Rezare Systems. It ensures the recipient of the data has agreed to terms and conditions imposed by the organisation providing the data.

The project is part of a wider data initiative arising from the 'Transforming the Dairy Value Chain' Primary Growth Partnership (PGP) partly funded by DairyNZ, Fonterra and the Ministry for Primary Industries, and it is now collaborating with Beef + LambNZ through the Red Meat PGP. Rezare Systems is managing the project; it is an ag software company that was spun out of AgResearch in 2004.

Cooke says in conversations with farmers at Fieldays, "as soon as you start talking about data they trot out stories about lost data and about answering the same questions posed by six different people who drive up the driveway: those are the things they want us to solve".

Farmers need to get the message that their industry organisation is working on a solution via this project.

"If we do this right, farmers won't use Data Linker as such; but they will notice that all those various systems they use onfarm will start talking together, and they can actually get things done effectively without sitting down to punch in data."

Farmers will probably need to start asking their IT and software providers and data people if are they on board or when they will get on board. That pressure, he says, will help keep things moving.

For example, a company with nutrient data for a farmer may be willing to share that with other organisations, if the farmer is willing. But it would be on the terms and conditions the farmer agreed to.

Data Linker is the technical framework that allows all that to happen 'under the hood'. The project started last December.

"We have built the technical framework and six organisations are the early adopters, testing linking their systems together. And a wider bunch have said 'this is interesting, we're keen to use it; as soon as it's deemed successful, sign us up'.

"[We found at] Fieldays a lot of larger organisations that were very aware of it and a lot of the smaller ones saying 'this is absolutely what we need; we'll be on as soon as we can'.

"We are testing it now; the first connections farmers are likely to see will be happening around August and then if it is connected and working we've got a bunch of organisations that have said around October would suit them to get going," he says.

Effective use of data

Effective use of data and saving farmers from having to enter the same data over and over; that's the point of Data Linker, says Andrew Cooke.

When the project started, another PGP group – Beef + Lamb NZ, six meat companies and two banks – was found to have similar objectives, so the two groups joined forces about 18 months ago to fund the project.

There are three work streams; Data Linker is the third. The first two are in effect 'hygiene' – underpinning things you need to make more effective use of data, says Cooke.

The PGP is for organisations that collect this data for the agri sector – a dairy or meat company, a fertiliser or software company. About 60-100 organisations have participated so far either in workshops on appropriate uses of data or developing data standards.

The first work stream was the Farm Data Code of Practice, an accreditation process similar to other industry codes of practice such as irrigation.

The goal is to get organisations that hold or capture farm data to write clear and transparent terms and conditions that farmers can understand, to explain who owns data, who has rights to the data and who can control where it goes. The farmer knows who can take it out and whether you can prevent a company using it if you choose to go somewhere else.

Developed over a couple of years, it was launched early 2016. Three software organisations are accredited so far – Farmax, FarmIQ and Gateway Data Services – and nine are in process, including banks, regional councils and nutrient companies.

The second work stream is Farm Data Standards – a list of names for pieces of data, so that industry people can avoid having to reinvent names for the data – documenting the best way of describing data. For example, measuring pasture cover is referred to as 'pasture cover', measured in kilograms of dry matter per hectare (kgDM/ha).

"That avoids people having to come up with incompatible ways of describing data, because if [terms are] incompatible, despite the best of intentions you can't share or re-use them," Cooke says.