AgGateway's Precision Agriculture Council has launched a third phase of its successful Standardized Precision Ag Data Exchange (SPADE) Project, which will expand on existing work related to automated data exchange in modern farm operations, to focus on crop scouting, crop nutrition, wireless asset and vehicle data exchange, and automation of commodity data for rail and truck transport. 

The project, which is a collaboration of 24 companies and precision ag experts, will continue to provide improved efficiency and time savings for growers, giving farmers the ability to seamlessly share data with valued trading partners and for regulatory compliance, while improving accuracy and tracking capabilities. SPADE3 is expected to be completed in December 2016.

"SPADE continues to be one of the most productive and exciting activities in precision agriculture today," said Project Chair Jeremy Wilson of Crop IMS. "We are already seeing applications in the field from these seminal efforts, with much more to come. As these changes are implemented, growers in the U.S. and around the world will be able to better manage their operations, with huge potential benefits in terms of their ongoing productivity and profitability."

Project participants to date include Ag Connections, Ag Leader, AGCO, AgIntegrated, Charles Hillyer (Texas A&M), CNH Industrial, Crop IMS, Digi-Star, DTN, F4F Agriculture, Farmobile, Inserto, Heartland Co-op, Land O'Lakes, OAGi, Praxidyn, ProAg, Software Solutions Integrated, SST Software, Syngenta, Topcon, Trimble, XS Inc., and ZedX. The project is still accepting participants; for more information contact Jim Wilson at Jim.Wilson@AgGateway.org or contact AgGateway Member Services at Member.Services@AgGateway.org.

SPADE, which was launched in 2012, has produced essential work for seamless data exchange in seeding operations, field operations data interoperability (including developing a conversion toolbox called ADAPT for data exchange), harvest operations, U.S. regulatory reporting, and crop protection operations. SPADE3 will specifically focus on seeding operations implementation, field operations data interoperability (ADAPT implementation), harvest operations implementation, crop protection operations implementation, crop nutrition, grain handling, crop scouting and telematics. The wireless asset and vehicle focus will look at connectivity of computer devices on the farm regardless of brand - a common weakness in a farmer's efforts today to capture and use data related to crop management. The rail and truck segment of the project will focus on ways to transact data used to track harvested grain from the field through the logistics process, and to the grain management system.

Project participants will also work to integrate SPADE with AgGateway's Ag Industry Identification System (AGIIS), an interactive database and set of services to provide reference data to agribusinesses, helping make electronic communication possible.

More information on SPADE will be available at InfoAg in St. Louis, Mo., later this month, and at the AgGateway Annual Conference in San Antonio, Texas, November 9-12. For more information, go to www.AgGateway.org.