AgGateway has released a 2-minute introductory video that shares basic information on the AgGateway ADAPT Framework, an open source software project that is designed to simplify communication between growers, their machines and their partners. The video, which can be found at https://ADAPTFramework.org/adapt-videos, answers general questions about what ADAPT is and how it works.

The goal of the video is to encourage software developers to adopt ADAPT within their products. Widespread use of the ADAPT framework will provide farmers with more choice in the systems they use while reducing costs for those systems to effectively "talk to each other."

The framework was developed within the non-profit AgGateway forum as a collaborative industry project, in order to tackle the long-standing challenge of seamless communication between systems.

"ADAPT is a framework that accommodates a wide variety of standards and proprietary systems," said Mark Stelford, Chairman of AgGateway's ADAPT Oversight Committee and General Manager of Premier Crop Systems. "This video is an easy way to get the gist of ADAPT - and it's easy to share with others when discussing the benefits of implementing the framework or creating a plugin."

The ADAPT solution allows each equipment manufacturer to keep its own proprietary software and technology in the cab, monitor or application, but also allows companies to "export to" and "import from" a variety of file formats using a single integration with the ADAPT framework.

This allows Farm Management Information Systems (FMIS) companies to program once and be able to translate data from all companies that provide ADAPT plugins, including other FMIS companies. It will also allow an FMIS to export a prescription to any monitor that has an ADAPT plugin.

In order for ADAPT to be implemented, various manufacturers must develop plugins so that their proprietary products can interact with the framework. Earlier this year, AgGateway released Version 2 of the ADAPT ISO Plugin, making it easier for FMIS systems to read and write data to/from displays and terminals that follow the ISO11783 specification.

Several major original equipment manufacturers and software companies with specialized services have either completed plugins or made formal commitments to release them for many of their proprietary data formats.

More information about the status of this effort can be found at https://ADAPTFramework.org/companies-supporting-adapt/.

ADAPT, which stands for Agricultural Data Application Programming Toolkit, is an open source project that was released to the industry in 2016. The Agricultural Retailers Association (ARA) and many major grower organizations, including the American Farm Bureau Federation, have encouraged manufacturers to implement ADAPT to help ag retailers, agronomists and growers better manage data and apply it to make improvements in their operations. 

Equipment manufacturers and software companies are encouraged to go to https://ADAPTFramework.org for more information. More on AgGateway activities, including information on how to become involved, can be found at www.AgGateway.org.