Returning for a third time to the Agricultural Electronics Foundation’s (AEF) annual North American Plugfest event in Lincoln, Neb., I again marveled at the intensity of the dozens of engineers as they hustled from station to station in search of enhanced equipment compatibility.

If farmers and agronomists were better able to use data from their irrigation management systems — including information on weather, soil moisture and crop types — they could make more informed decisions about when, where and how much water to apply, resulting in smarter energy and water use, and lowering costs while protecting or improving yield.

With all the activity surrounding telematics and farm management systems, it's sometimes difficult to identify all the right players. Are groups overlapping on effort? Are they working together efficiently?

ADAPT helps enable interoperability between different software and hardware applications. AgGateway is now coordinating with software companies on plugs-ins needed for ADAPT's adoption.

AgGateway is celebrating its 10-year anniversary by launching several new programs at its Annual Conference November 9-12 in San Antonio, TX, that highlight innovations in agricultural eBusiness – or "eAgriculture."

AgGateway members who conduct business in regions other than North America are supporting an effort to expand the AgGateway vision more globally.

The project is a collaboration of 24 companies and precision ag experts. SPADE3 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.

Extensive work on standards for seed, crop protection products and fertilizer has in recent years extended to work in the precision agriculture space.

WinField has increased its participation in two separate efforts to help simplify the exchange of information between software platforms while ensuring that farmers retain ownership and control of their data.