The Challenge

To realise the true power of open data for agriculture there needs to a positive enabling environment that supports sharing and using data. To achieve this a wide variety of organisations, companies and government bodies need to agree what exactly is meant by open data and how it can be implemented across sectors, nations and borders. Without a common understanding and commitment to open data, valuable change-making information will remain locked away.

The Solution

Following the second in a series of Creating Impacts with Open Data Workshops in The Hague in 2015, the GODAN Secretariat was asked by Syngenta to co-develop a vision paper entitled Global Data Ecosystem for Agriculture and Food.

In this vision paper, GODAN partners articulated what would be needed to create such an ecosystem. The report discusses incentives for sharing, publishing, using and re-using data, and the importance of frameworks such as the FAIR Data Principles and Five Star Open Data. Key GODAN partners commented on the vision paper, and the content has been used as part of the eROSA project, to advise the European Commission on a "Roadmap for a pan-European e-Infrastructure for Open Science in Agricultural and Food Sciences". Additionally the GODAN Secretariat, the Dutch Techcentre for Life Sciences (DTL) and WUR have created an animated documentary on the Farm Data Train (FDT). The animation serves as a visual representation of potential uses of the FAIR Data Principles in the Agriculture and Nutrition domain, and encourages stakeholders in these domains to apply them in real-word contexts - with the goal of connecting agricultural data and making it more useable.

The Outcome

The knowledge shared has resulted in a greater awareness of what is needed to enable data stored in many different organisations and businesses to be opened. It has helped the process of making open data a mainstream subject increasing the volume of information gathered by governments, institutions and businesses to become open data, supporting innovations and efficiencies in agriculture across the globe.