Digital Opportunities for Better Agricultural Policies by OECD

Author:OECD
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: environment/science/agriculture
Publisher: OECD Publishing
Published: 2019-09-23T00:00:00+00:00

Box 5.3. Case Study 10: Data infrastructure and the potential role of the government supporting the data infrastructure—Example of the Akkerweb in the Netherlands

This case study provides a practical example of how an open data infrastructure can facilitate the creation and uptake of value adding services by the private sector, supporting productivity and sustainability in agriculture, using the example of the Akkerweb digital platform and data repository. Akkerweb is a foundation, founded by both Wageningen University and Research (WUR) and a farmer association, Agrifirm. Scientific knowledge and a practical approach to farmers’ problems are combined to develop successful applications. Some data and applications are made available by the WUR research team, others are added by the private sector.

In the Netherlands, a plethora of unrelated systems have been accumulating data about on-farm activities, farm performance (e.g. yield variation) and the characteristics of production assets, resulting in a fragmentation of data. In addition, while a large amount of data is being used and acquired, most is not actionable, meaning that it cannot be directly used (or re-used) for further production of information feeding into decision processes (analytics). Akkerweb is a digital repository and work bench upon which applications, ranging from data visualisation to analytics and decision support, can be built by both the public and the private sector.

Farmers can access a free account and add information that is securely managed on the platform. The platform provides a variety of agriculture related applications readily usable by farmers, using their data, and providing support to decision making to optimise production objectives. In Akkerweb, the farmer can combine his or her farm specific data with data from public sources (satellites, soil maps, weather data, parcel maps from the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) etc.) with proprietary data sources such as sampling bodies, parties in the chain, farm management systems, own sensors etc. In particular, WUR currently provides free satellite data already translated, using complex computation, into in vegetation indices (indication of the amount of vegetation, distinguishing between soil and vegetation etc.). This data is then combined with other commercial data (for example drone data) for a range of advisory services.

Farmers can also access government data. For instance, active links are available with the data store of the national Paying Agency (RVO) and with other farm management systems, to prevent double entry of data. Only the farmer has access to their own data but they can grant access to others at their discretion, making it a type of “controlled access” data governance. In this way, they can give access to their advisors to help them monitor the crops or interpret a soil analysis. Farmers are therefore free to share enriched data with advisers and other users on the platform, to obtain practical recommendations to optimise crop production. The system itself provides interoperability of data. Any data provider can link their data (e.g. soil laboratories) and make them available to farmers.

Source: Case Study 10, Part IV.

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