A nationwide agriculture data interoperability project headed by Trust Alliance New Zealand has secured $493,500 in funding from the Ministry for Primary Industries’ (MPI) Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures fund (SFF Futures).
The total budget of this Digital Farm Environment project is $823,500 project, according to MPI.
The goal is to allow farmers to be able to capture, share and access data from farms across Aotearoa to reduce duplication of effort and data siloes, and improve outcomes for all farmers, TANZ chairman Chris Claridge told CRN.
“This is not another app for farmers,” Claridge asserted. “It’s about, how do we make current systems future proofed, How do we ensure data gets captured and reused, and how do we make systems talk to each other more efficiently?”
TANS will be working with around 500 stakeholders, including a range of digital services providers for farms, the Ministries for Primary Industries and the Environment, regional councils and AgriTech NZ.
Other partners in the project include IT services provider Eagle Technology, data interop specialists Agrigate, farm management software platform FarmIQ, nutrient technology provider Ballance Agri-Nutrients, and farm data and analytics provider MyEnviro.
Potatoes NZ, ANZ bank, Auckland Council, Federated Farmers and GS1 will also be involved.
“We want to help farmers unlock the value of data,” Claridge added. “First, we have to make the systems work more efficiently for the end user. We don’t consider this a technology project first, it is a people led project.”
It will allow for the provisioning data to central and local governments where appropriate to help address compliance needs as consumers are wanting greater assurance that the products they are supplied are produced in an environmentally friendly way.
With a research base of around 1,000 farms, it also aims to work with them to provide a solution that will help farmers streamline their decision making and make better informed decisions that will improve outcomes, such as winning more contracts.
Claridge noted that the project is currently in the early stages of planning and strategising with stakeholders to consider the best way to achieve these outcomes.
