1. Final SRA ‘Common
Basis for policy making
for introduction of
innovative approaches
on data exchange in
agri-food industry’
network for data exchange in agriculture
2. Final Strategic Research Agenda (SRA):
Common Basis for policy
making for the introduction of innovative
approaches to data exchange in the agri-
food industry
Karel Charvat, Sarka Horakova, Sjaak Wolfert, Henri Holster, Otto Schmid, Liisa
Pesonen, Daniel Martini, Esther Mietzsch, Tomas Mildorf (WP5)
28. 11. 2012
Final
D 5.2.
th
agriXchange is funded by the European Commission’s 7
Framework Programme, Contract no. 244957
3. About the agriXchange project
agriXchange is a EU-funded project and it is a coordination and support action to setup a
network for developing a system for common data exchange in the agricultural sector.
Project summary
Within the knowledge-based bio-economy, information sharing is an important issue. In agri-food
business, this is a complex issue because many aspects and dimensions play a role. An installed
base of information systems lack standardisation, which hampers efficient exchange of information.
This leads to inefficient business processes and hampers adoption of new knowledge and
technology. The exchange of information at whole chain or network level is poorly organised.
Although arable and livestock farming have their own specific needs, there are many similarities in
the need for an integrated approach. Spatial data increasingly plays an important role in agriculture.
The overall objective of this project is to coordinate and support the setting up of a sustainable
network for developing a system for common data exchange in agriculture. This will be achieved by:
ï establishing a platform on data exchange in agriculture in the EU;
ï developing a reference framework for interoperability of data exchange;
ï identifying the main challenges for harmonising data exchange.
First, an in-depth analysis and investigation of the state-of-the art in EU member states will be carried
out. A platform is built up that facilitates communication and collaborative working groups, that work
on several, representative use cases, guided by an integrative reference framework. The framework
consists of a sound architecture and infrastructure based on a business process modeling approach
integrating existing standards and services. The development is done in close interaction with
relevant stakeholders through the platform and international workshops. The results converge into a
strategic research agenda that contains a roadmap for future developments.
Project consortium:
ï Wageningen University & Research Center (LEI, LSR, Alterra) - The Netherlands
ï KuratoriumfürTechnikundBauwesen in der Landwirtschaft (KTBL) - Germany
ï MTT Agrifood Research - Finland
ï Wireless Info (WRLS) - Czech Republic
ï Institut de l’Elevage (ELEV) - France
ï Institut de RecercaiTecnologiaAgroalimentàries (IRTA) - Spain
ï Teagasc - Ireland
ï Universität Rostock-Germany
ï ForschungsinstitutfürBiologischenLandbau (FIBL) - Switzerland
ï Altavia - Italy
ï Poznan University of Life Sciences (PULS) - Poland
ï ACTA Informatique - France
ï Progis software - Austria
More information:
Dr. Sjaak Wolfert (coordinator) e-mail: sjaak.wolfert@wur.nl
LEI Wageningen UR phone: +31 317 485 939
P.O. Box 35 mobile: +31 624 135 790
6700 AA Wageningen www.agriXchange.eu
The Netherlands info@agriXchange.eu
4. Table of Contents
Figures and Tables ...............................................................................................................................5
Abbreviations ........................................................................................................................................6
Executive Summary ..............................................................................................................................7
Synthetic Summary .............................................................................................................................12
1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................19
1.1 Background and scope .......................................................................................................19
1.2 Problem ..............................................................................................................................19
1.3 Objectives of study .............................................................................................................20
1.4 Approach and outline..........................................................................................................20
2 ICT for Agriculture Interoperability ...............................................................................................22
2.1 Data, information and knowledge .......................................................................................22
2.2 Standardisation need for the agriculture sector ..................................................................23
2.3 Interoperability on farm level ..............................................................................................24
3 Standardisation ............................................................................................................................25
3.1 Current standardisation initiatives ......................................................................................25
3.1.1 ISO .................................................................................................................................25
3.1.2 W3C ...............................................................................................................................25
3.1.3 OASIS ............................................................................................................................25
3.1.4 OGC ...............................................................................................................................25
3.1.5 IEEE ...............................................................................................................................25
3.1.6 VDMA – ISOBUS ...........................................................................................................26
3.1.7 agroXML .........................................................................................................................26
3.1.8 INSPIRE .........................................................................................................................26
3.2 agriXchange results ............................................................................................................26
3.3 Conclusion ..........................................................................................................................27
4 Overview of past activities............................................................................................................29
4.1 Aforo ...................................................................................................................................29
4.2 Rural Wins ..........................................................................................................................31
4.3 Valencia Declaration...........................................................................................................33
4.4 eRural Brussels conference conclusions............................................................................35
4.5 Prague Declaration .............................................................................................................36
4.6 aBard vision ........................................................................................................................37
4.7 ami@netfood Strategic Research Agenda .........................................................................38
4.8 The vision on the future value chain for 2016 by the Global Commerce Initiative..............39
4.9 Study on Availability of Access to Computer Networks in Rural Areas ..............................40
4.10 The research agenda of the European Platform for Food for Life ......................................41
4.11 Future Farm vision..............................................................................................................41
4.12 The Research Agenda and the Action Plan by the Technology Platform for Organic Food
and Farming.....................................................................................................................................47
4.13 The third SCAR Foresight exercise ....................................................................................48
Final SRA 3
5. 4.14 Cologne declaration............................................................................................................49
4.15 Vision, Strategic Research Agenda and Third Implementation Action Plan (2009) of the
European Agriculture Machinery Industry (Subplatform AET of the Technology Platform
MANUFUTURE................................................................................................................................51
4.16 ICT Agri Eranet ...................................................................................................................51
4.17 agriXchange analysis of data exchange in agriculture in the EU27 & Switzerland ............53
4.18 Conclusions from the overview of past activities ................................................................56
5 Future Trends in ICT - Future Internet, Open Data and Open Source ........................................58
5.1 ICT vision of Future Internet ...............................................................................................58
5.1.1 c@r .................................................................................................................................58
5.1.2 COIN IP ..........................................................................................................................59
5.1.3 FI-WARE ........................................................................................................................60
5.1.4 SmartAgriFood ...............................................................................................................61
5.1.5 agINFRA .........................................................................................................................62
5.2 Open Source Software (OSS) ............................................................................................63
5.2.1 Open Data ......................................................................................................................64
5.3 Conclusion from Future Trends ..........................................................................................65
6 Future challenges for ICT for Agri-food ........................................................................................67
6.1 Why are the challenges important ......................................................................................67
6.2 Political and organisational challenges...............................................................................68
6.3 Technological, innovation and research challenges ...........................................................69
7 Application Research domain for Agriculture, Food, Rural development and Environment ........71
8 ICT Technologies for agri-food and rural regions.........................................................................75
9 SRA for standardisation in agri-food data, information and knowledge .......................................79
9.1 Conclusion from SRA for standardisation...........................................................................87
10 Recommendations for long-term agriXchange sustainability..................................................88
10.1 Challenge 1 ........................................................................................................................88
10.2 Challenge 2 ........................................................................................................................89
10.3 Challenge 3 ........................................................................................................................89
10.4 Challenge 4 ........................................................................................................................90
10.5 Challenge 5 ........................................................................................................................90
References ..........................................................................................................................................91
4 Final SRA
6. Figures and Tables
Figure 1 Schema of the challenges that influence the SRA ................................................................14
Table 1 Matrix of relation between Challenges and Applications research Domain ...........................15
Table 2 Matrix of dependencies between Applications domain and ICT development priorities .......16
Figure 2 The Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom hierarchy of Ackoff [3] .......................................22
Figure 3 Schematic overview of relationships between farm management and its environment (from
Sörensen et al [6]) ...............................................................................................................................24
Figure 4 The AFORO road mapping methodology .............................................................................30
Figure 5 Framework of the Rural Wins project to describe ICT requirements and issues for rural and
maritime areas. ...................................................................................................................................32
Figure 6 Exchange of knowledge’s cross different levels of farm management .................................42
Figure 7 C@R Reference architecture ................................................................................................59
Figure 8 Future Internet Cloud Layers ................................................................................................60
Figure 9 The 5-start deployment scheme for Open Data [65] .............................................................65
Figure 10 Two factors that define the long-term sustainability of agriXchange ...................................67
Figure 11 Four chains of influence ......................................................................................................68
Table 3 Matrix of relation between Challenges and Applications research Domain ...........................72
Table 4 Matrix of dependencies between Applications domain and ICT development priorities ........76
Table 5 Agri-food standardisation needs on different level of Data-Information-Knowledge hierarchy
for different ICT Research Domains ....................................................................................................80
Final SRA 5
7. Abbreviations
CAP Common agricultural policy
DG Directorate-General of the European Commission
DG REGIO Directorate General for Regional Policy
Digital Agenda A Digital Agenda for Europe
EFITA European Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture, Food and the
Environment
eRural IP eRural Integrated Project
FAO Food and Agriculture Organisation
FP7 Seventh Framework Programme
FI-PPP Future Internet Public-Private Partnership
GIS Geographic information system
HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol
i2010 A European Information Society for growth and employment
ICT Information and communication technology
INFITA International Network for Information Technology in Agriculture
KBBE Knowledge-Based Bio-Economy
LEADER European Community Initiative for assisting rural communities in improving the
quality of life and economic prosperity in their local area
PR Public relations
IoT Internet of Things
IPR Intellectual Property Rights
OSGeo Open Source Geospatial Foundation
OSI Open Source Initiative
OSS Open Source Software
RDF Resource Description Framework
RFID Radio Frequency Identification RT&D
RTD Research and Technology Development
SLA Service Level Agreement
SMEs Small and medium-sized enterprises
SWG Special Working Groups
SRA Strategic Research Agenda
URI Uniform Resource Identifier
WLAN Wireless local area network
WIMAX Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access
WTO World Trade Organization
XML Extensible Markup Language
6 Final SRA
8. Executive Summary
In our networked society, standards play an important role. That is especially the case in exchanging
digital data. With “Standards” we refer to the protocols that describe how data (in so called ‘meta-
data’) and the data-exchange are defined to make a digital exchange of data between two devices
(often computers but also computer-machine interaction) possible. Such standards enable
interoperability of data, information and knowledge between systems – they ensure compatibility.
Standards can reduce choice but the big advantage is that they reduce transaction costs to share
data and promote competition (users can easily change suppliers as they are not ‘locked in’ to
complete systems). That means they can also support innovation, although the wide use of a
standard can also block progress to something better.
Standardisation (the process of setting standards) can be a problematic process. Some standards
arise automatically in the market, for instance because somebody introduces an exemplary new
product that gets a large market share (the PDF format for published documents is an example). In
other cases newcomers to the market have a big incentive to support interoperability to win market
share (e.g. MS Word supports the use of WordPerfect files). However, often it is not that easy.
New products are not always developed with standardisation in mind, which can lead to path
dependency (as is shown in the debate if the QWERTY key pad was and is still optimal). In some
cases there have been fierce debates if a certain product standard that wins in the market, is really
optimal (e.g. in video recording between the technical advanced BETAMAX and the VHS that could
record a full football match). A standard can also lead to a monopolistic position of a product, but also
a clever use or a lack of standards can lead to unbalanced market situations (Shapiro and Varian,
1999)1.
Where there is not a guarantee that good standards arise automatically, they have to be created. As
many benefit from a standard, and a standard has positive externalities, free rider behaviour and
underinvestment is not unthinkable. There is an organisational challenge to create and maintain
standards.
Often this challenge is taken up by industry organisations, especially standard setting organisations
that have clear, open procedures for that activity. For instance, in Dutch agriculture specific
organisations (like AgroConnect) financed by industry membership fees set standards for specific
EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) messages in agriculture, after developing with industry partners
and research. In Germany KTBL plays a similar role concerning AgroXML. In food-retail the barcode
is an important standard, originally developed by Albert Heijn (now Ahold) in the 1970s and proposed
to colleague-retailers. Currently GS1 maintains such standards. Some standards are set by
governments, e.g. in the framework of UN/CEFACT. In some cases such standards are regulated to
be obligatory, or are obligatory in data exchange with the government (Blind, 2004)2.
agriXchange
It is against this background that agriXchange established a network of persons and organisations for
developing a system for common data exchange in the agricultural sector. This report provides a
strategic research agenda (SRA) for future work on data exchange and standards. The objective of
1
C. Shapiro and H. Varian: The Art of Standard Wars in: California Management Review, 41-2, 1999
2
K. Blind: The Economics of Standards: theory, evidence, policy. Edgar Elgar, 2004
Final SRA 7
9. the SRA is to identify major challenges related to data exchange and the use of standards identified
mainly in the agriculture sector but also the agri-food industry sector.
The development of standards is based on data-models that describe the data that has to be
exchange and in a way that ensures the compatibility with the data systems at both ends of the
transfer. agriXchange investigated some cases to build a reference model for the standard setting
process itself, and implemented a practical model tool (aXTool) in the agriXchange platform to
search for and develop standards.
Future ICT use as demand for standards
To promote future standard setting in agriculture it is important to have an idea on the future use of
ICT. A review of the literature concludes that the deployment of ICT infrastructure for (standardised)
data exchange in Europe is progressing very fast. A large part of the population in Europe has the
possibility to access broadband or has permanent access to the Internet (the bandwidth is usually
lower for rural regions than for cities). However the actual use is much lower than the potential, and
especially agriculture and the rural areas are behind in the uptake of this technology. In many cases
application priorities are the same as 10 years ago. A big problem in going forward is the data,
information and knowledge exchange and interoperability. The uptake of new ICT interoperable
technologies in primary production, which will be accepted by farming sector, is an important part of
our SRA.
Our analysis learns that the last decade there is low sustainability of ICT related agri-food research
and little exchange of experiences among projects. Often similar analyses with similar results are
provided, but overall progress is slow. To overcome this problem, it is necessary to support a long-
term suitability of ICT research and to support a long-time vision for RTD development in the agri-
food sector.
We also conclude that better and faster implementation of ICT and related RTD demand more
appropriate business model thinking in addition to the current technical focus. Better and faster
implementation would also be supported by a strong professional (international) organisation which
unifies different efforts of different ICT research and development groups, but which will be also able
to protect interests of communities. The candidate for such an organisation could be the European
Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture, Food and the Environment (EFITA,) but it will
be necessary to change its organisational structure.
It is important to renew dialogues for politicians to focus on ICT for rural regions as part of Horizon
2020 activities. It is not only important to support standardisation awareness, but also deployment of
new solutions necessary for rural regions. Currently, ICT for agri-food is not covered on a large scale.
It is It is important to renew dialogues with politicians to focus on ICT for rural regions as part of
Horizon 2020 activities.
Due to the global character of agriculture and food production and also because agriculture
production influences and is influenced by the environment, it is important to improve dialogue and
transfer of ICT knowledge between developed and developing countries.
The latest ICT research trends, cover three aspects: Future Internet, Open Source Software and
Open Data. Future Internet (mainly cloud computing) and Open Source Software, show two
important developments:
• Interoperability and service-oriented architecture, which allows easy replacement of one
component or service by another one. This concept is already currently broadly used in
geographic information systems.
8 Final SRA
10. • Support for large-scale use of Open Sources by Future Internet. Currently, Open Source
generates business for companies which customise solutions into final applications. Such
web-based solutions could generate profit for SMEs developers.
Open data initiatives and Public Sector Information are also considered important for the agri-food
sector. Until now, mainly farmers have been limited by restricted access to data, information and
knowledge. Linked Data introduces new semantic principles into Web resources and could be useful
to the agri-food sector.
Beyond future ICT use: research for far-future ICT use.
Where the previous section discussed the future ICT use with an eye to the demand for standards,
we could even look further ahead by looking to the research priorities in agriculture and ICT
research. (figure 1)
Figure 1 Challenges that affect the SRA
Technological, innovation and research challenges are seen in the area of balancing food safety and
security, energy production and environmentally and socially sound production; in supporting a better
adoption of agriculture of climatic change challenges, and to make rural regions an attractive place to
live, invest and work, promoting knowledge and innovation for growth and creating more and better
jobs. Supporting the farming community with rural education, training and awareness building in ICT
and to build new ICT models for sharing and use of knowledge by the agri-food community and in
rural regions in general are challenges clearly linked to ICT.
When it comes to research priorities on ICT in agri-food, the following research priorities have been
identified:
• Collaborative environments and trusted sharing of knowledge and supporting innovations in
agri-food and rural areas, especially supporting food quality and security.
• New (ICT) structures to serve sustainable animal farming, especially regarding animal and
human health and animal welfare.
• ICT applications for the complete traceability of production, products and services
throughout a networked value chain including logistics.
• A new generation of applications supporting better and more effective management of
sustainable agriculture production and decision making in agriculture ICT applications
supporting the management of natural resources.
• An ICT application supporting adoption of farming practices adapted to climatic changes.
• An ICT application supporting energy efficiency on farm level.
• An ICT application supporting rural development and local businesses.
• An ICT application for education, training and awareness raising.
• ICT applications reducing administrative burdens in rural areas.
Final SRA 9
11. Future standardisation needs: the SRA
Based on this analysis of future use of ICT in agriculture, we can address the future need for
standardisation. This leads to the following observations on data, information and knowledge
standardisation.
Concerning data standardisation, the agri-food community will mainly be the consumer of standards
coming from other domains or activities. For example activities related to Future Internet, where it is
the intention to design low-level standards allowing developers to access data through standardised
API. A similar situation, for example, can be found with geospatial data, where access is solved
through OGC standards. Also questions like security are mainly solved outside the agri-food
community. It is important to follow such initiatives, and eventually participate in them if progress is
not fast enough or solutions tend not to take agri-food specifics into account. In two specific
agricultural areas further development is necessary inside of the agri-food community:
o ISOBUS for access to information to agriculture machinery;
o Special agriculture sensors or RFID activities.
More important seems to be the standardisation efforts at the information level. This focuses on
protocols (Web services), API and data models for exchange of information in different areas such as
traceability, precision farming, livestock transport, welfare regulations, subsidies systems (for
example LPIS), weather information, market information, logistic information. It seems that for the
coming years the key focus will be in this area. The work could be partly related to activities such as
agroXML.
With the expansion of Web-based technologies, more standardisation efforts will be necessary at the
knowledge level. Access to knowledge is the goal of many information systems. It is necessary to
build knowledge based tools, which will help user in orientation and right decision. That could be
ontologies, RDF schemas for linked open data, thesauri or vocabularies. Such activities already
exist, for example under FAO (AgroVoc thesaurus) and different tools of knowledge management.
This effort is partly covered by a new project agINFRA.
After AgriXchange….
In standardisation, it is important to transfer the standard to the community. It is necessary to support
communication between researchers, politicians, industry and also final users. It is necessary to
transfer all knowledge to the users. It is important that the requirements for standards are not
defined only by the government or by large industry. Standards have to cover needs of users like
farmers and regional and local ICT developers. Involvement of these communities is crucial. At the
other side, the food market is international and for example information about food traceability has to
be shared worldwide. It is important in this area to develop and support global standards.
It is not realistic to establish a new organization for such standardisation processes, although more
coordination at EU level seems attractive. This is not only a question of financing, but it is also a
question of building infrastructure, human resources, etc. For this reason, we recommend to hand
over and continue agriXchange results under the umbrella of an existing organisation. It will increase
the chances for financing of future activities. As an umbrella organisation at EU level, the European
Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture (EFITA) would be most suitable.
Currently, ICT for the agri-food sector is not covered by any policies and also there is no direct
support for such activities. The topic is addressed by different Directorate Generals (DGs), but no DG
covers this issue fully. It is important to include these topics as part of the European priorities and
also as part of Horizon 2020. Collaboration between member states could be strengthened by the
ERAnet ICT-Agri. It is important to have a strong representative community, which will provide the
10 Final SRA
12. necessary lobbying. On the worldwide level, part of these activities is covered by FAO. But there are
gaps between FAO and the worldwide community. It is necessary to improve cooperation. The
International Network for Information Technology in Agriculture (INFITA) could play an important role
here.
RTD results and results of standardisation have to be transferred into practice to local and regional
users. In the future, the agINFRA project could be of help. The project has an objective to build
infrastructure for sharing agriculture information. It is necessary to support open innovation initiatives
in rural regions. It would be good to introduce concept of “Smart Rural Regions” similar to Smart
Cities.
Final SRA 11
13. Synthetic Summary
The agriXchange Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) goes beyond the general scope of the
agriXchange initiative. It is focused not only on standardisation of data exchange but also on the
definition of research priorities for ICT in the agri-food sector and for future sustainability of ICT
agriculture research and standardisation.
The document was prepared in two stages. Project team studies and available materials were the
basis for the first stage. The second stage involved community contribution, which comprised the
following three ways of updating the document:
• Publishing the draft agriXchange SRA on the project agriXchange platform for public
discussion.
• In situ discussion about the draft agriXchange SRA on SmartAgriMatics 2012 conference in
Paris;
• Virtual discussion about the draft agriXchange SRA on Linked-In network. The challenges
and recommendations were discussed by an international community. A number of
comments and contributions came from social networks. In effect, this was the most
valuable source of comments.
The last update of the document was done on the basis of comments and discussions within the
agriXchange team. Those comments led to this final version of the document.
The document is divided into ten parts.
The first part, the introduction, defines the background and scope, main problems, objectives and
approach and outline for the rest of the document.
The second part introduces basic problems of agriculture interoperability, the problems of
management and interoperability of data, information and knowledge in agriculture.
The third part gives a short overview of current standardisation initiatives, which are relevant to the
problems of agriXchange. It also describes current agriXchange activities in the area of
standardisation. The agriXchange work was focused on two topics:
• the structure of the framework model serves information on sharing and harmonisation
development for data exchange, and
• the implementation of the practical model tool (aXTool) in the agriXchange platform to
be user-friendly.
The fourth part gives an overview of previous activities. We analysed only those projects and
documents that were focused on a vision of future ICT for agri-food or eventually ICT for rural
development. The analyses conclude that the progress in the deployment of ICT infrastructure for
(standardised) data exchange in Europe is changing very fast and changes from one year to the
other. In principle, a large part of the population in Europe has the possibility to access broadband
or has permanent access to the Internet (the bandwidth is usually lower for rural regions than for
cities). This potential access to the Internet is not really used: real use of Internet access is lower in
rural regions and the uptake of new solutions into practice and also research in agri-food and rural
applications is slower than the deployment of the general infrastructure. In many cases application
priorities are the same as 10 years ago. The big problem is the data, information and knowledge
exchange and interoperability.
12 Final SRA
14. • From the overview we come to the following conclusions, important for building of
agriXchange SRA: The uptake of new ICT interoperable technologies in primary production,
which will be accepted by farming sector
• The analysis of documents from the last decade demonstrates that there is low sustainability
of ICT for agri-food research and little exchange of experiences among projects. Often
similar analyses with similar results are provided, but overall progress is slow. To overcome
this problem, it is necessary to support a long-term suitability of ICT research and to support
a long-time vision for RTD development in the agri-food sector.
• Better and faster implementation of RTD results of ICT in practice with appropriate business
model thinking.
• A strong professional (international) organisation which will unify different efforts of different
ICT research and development groups, but which will be also able to protect interests of
communities. The candidate for such an organisation could be the European Federation for
Information Technology in Agriculture, Food and the Environment (EFITA,) but it will be
necessary to change its organisational structure.
• It is important to renew dialogues for politicians to focus on ICT for rural regions as part of
Horizon 2020 activities. It is not only important to support standardisation awareness, but
also deployment of new solutions necessary for rural regions. Currently, ICT for agri-food is
not covered on a large scale, neither in DG Connect research nor in KBBE calls.
• Due to the global character of agriculture and food production and also because agriculture
production influences and is influenced by the environment, it is important to improve
dialogue and transfer of ICT knowledge between developed and developing countries.
Chapter five is focused on the latest ICT research trends, covering three aspects:
• Future Internet;
• Open Source Software;
• Open Data.
This chapter discusses the relation between Future Internet (mainly cloud computing) and Open
Source Software, which could be in some way considered as competitive approaches, but at the
same time they could be in synergy. There are two important aspects:
1. Interoperability and service-oriented architecture, which allows easy replacement of one
component or service by another one. This concept is already currently broadly used in
geographic information systems.
2. Support for large-scale use of Open Sources by Future Internet. Currently, Open Source
generates business for companies which customise solutions into final applications. Such
web-based solutions could generate profit for SMEs developers.
The last part of the analysis is focused on Open Data and Linked Data. Open data initiatives and
Public Sector Information are also considered important for the agri-food sector. Until now, mainly
farmers have been limited by restricted access to data, information and knowledge. Linked Data
introduces new semantic principles into Web resources and could be useful to the agri-food sector.
Chapters 2 to 5 are mainly analytical: the focus of these chapters was on collecting and analysis of
available resources. The next chapters are synthetic, focused on building a new vision.
Chapter 6 is focused on future challenges. There are two types of challenges
• Political-organisational challenges
• Technological, innovation and research challenges
Final SRA 13
15. The following flow chart explains how both types of challenges affect the SRA (Figure 2)
Figure 2 Challenges that affect the SRA
The following political and organisational challenges have been defined
The analysis in Chapter 4 in particular helps define the next political and organisational challenges
• To improve the representation of ICT agriculture specialists and users in European activities
• To include ICT and knowledge management for agri-food and rural communities generally
as a vital part of the ICT policies and initiatives
• To support a better transfer of RTD results and innovation to the everyday life of farmers,
food industry and other rural communities
• To accelerate bottom-up activities as a driver for local and regional development
• To support discussion and transfer of knowledge between developed and developing
countries
And the following technological, innovation and research challenges
• To find a better balance between food safety and security, energy production and
environmentally and socially sound production
• To support better adoption of agriculture on climatic changes
• To make rural regions an attractive place to live, invest and work, promoting knowledge and
innovation for growth and creating more and better jobs
• To support the farming community and rural education, training and awareness building in
ICT
• To build new ICT models for sharing and use of knowledge by the agri-food community and
in rural regions in general.
Chapter 7 defines the following research priorities for the Applications domain:
• Collaborative environments and trusted sharing of knowledge and supporting innovations in
agri-food and rural areas, especially supporting food quality and security.
• New (ICT) structures to serve sustainable animal farming, especially regarding animal and
human health and animal welfare.
• ICT applications for the complete traceability of production, products and services
throughout a networked value chain including logistics.
14 Final SRA
16. • A new generation of applications supporting better and more effective management of
sustainable agriculture production and decision making in agriculture ICT applications
supporting the management of natural resources.
• An ICT application supporting adoption of farming practices adapted to climatic changes.
• An ICT application supporting energy efficiency on farm level.
• An ICT application supporting rural development and local businesses.
• An ICT application for education, training and awareness raising.
• ICT applications reducing administrative burdens in rural areas.
Table 1 shows relation of these research priorities with the challenges.
The development of knowledge-based systems for the farming sector has to be supported by ICT
focusing on the areas as defined in:
Table 1 Relation matrix between Challenges and Applications research Domain
(Green indicates that some applications are the answer to a concrete challenge)
Chapter 8 defines priorities for ICT research domains. This list of domains was defined based on the
needs from application areas, but also based on the analysis of results from chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5.
The future development has to be supported by ICT focusing on:
• Future Internet and Internet-based applications such as sensor technology, cloud
computing and machine-to-machine communication.
• Mobile applications.
• Improving of positioning systems.
• Service Oriented Architecture.
• Methods of knowledge management.
• Semantic models, multilingualism, vocabularies and automatic translation.
• New Earth observation methods.
• Management and accessibility of geospatial information.
• Open data access.
• Open Source development.
• New modelling.
• The power of social networks and social media.
Final SRA 15
17. • New e-educational and training methods.
The relation between agri-food related applications and ICT research topics is described in Table 2.
Table 2 Dependency matrix between Applications domain and ICT development priorities
(The violet colour indicates that for a concrete application a specific technology is required)
Future Internet Mobile Improving of Service Methods of Semantic New earth Management Open data Open Source New modelling The power of New e-
and Internet of applications positioning Oriented knowledge models, observation and access. development methods social networks educational
Things systems. Architecture management multilingualism, methods accessibility of and social methods.
Application Research domain including vocabularies geospatial media
sensor and automatic information
technology, translation
cloud
computing and
machine to
machine
communication
ICT Research domain
Collaborative environments and
trusted sharing of knowledge and
supporting innovations in agri-food
and rural areas, especially supporting
food quality and security
New (ICT) structures to serve
sustainable animal farming, especially
regarding animal and human health
and animal welfare
ICT applications for the complete
traceability of production, products
and services throughout a networked
value chain including logistics
supporting better and more effective
management of sustainable
agriculture production and decision
making in agriculture ICT applications
supporting the management of natural
ICT application supporting adoption
of farming practices adapted to
climatic changes
ICT application supporting energy
efficiency on farm level
ICT application supporting rural
development and local businesses
ICT application for education, training
and awareness rising
ICT applications reducing
administrative burdens in rural areas
Chapter nine provides recommendations for a necessary future standardisation effort related to ICT
and agriculture applications priorities. The provided analysis stresses the following important facts:
• On the level of data standardisation, the agri-food community will mainly be the consumer of
standards coming from other domains or activities. For example activities related to Future
Internet, where it is the intention to design low-level standards allowing developers to access
data through standardised API. A similar situation, for example, can be found with geospatial
data, where access is solved through OGC standards. Also questions like security are
mainly solved outside of the agri-food community. It is important to follow this initiative, and
eventually participate in other initiatives including the SmartAgrifood project in Future
Internet. There are two areas where further development is necessary inside of the
community:
o ISOBUS for access to information to agriculture machinery;
o Special agriculture sensors or RFID activities.
• More important seems to be the effort on an information level. In accordance with work
which was provided in WP4, it is necessary to be focused on protocols (Web services), API
and data models for exchange of information in different areas such as traceability, precision
farming, live transport, welfare regulations, subsidies systems (for example LPIS), weather
information, market information, logistic information. It seems that for the next period the key
focus will be in this area. The work could be partly related to activities such as agroXML.
• In the future with the expansion of Web-based technologies, more effort will be necessary in
the area of knowledge level. Access to knowledge is the goal of many information systems.
It is necessary to build knowledge based tools, which will help user in orientation and right
16 Final SRA
18. decision. It could be ontologies, RDF schemas for open linked data, thesaurus or
vocabularies. Such activities already exist, for example under FAO (AgroVoc thesaurus) and
different tools of knowledge management. This effort is partly covered by the new project
agINFRA.
Chapter 10 defines long-term strategic goals for sustainability of agriXchange. This strategy follows
the political organisational challenges defined in Chapter 6 for the following reasons:
• In any area there are two types of standardisation efforts:
o Community or industry driven effort. For these it is necessary to have structure
inside the community, which will take leadership in this area.
o Politically driven standardisation – in the agri-food area it could include standards
for animals welfare, food security etc. For implementation in practice, it is necessary
to support related policy. Also, it is good for policy makers to have partners on the
community level.
• For any standard it is important to transfer it to the community. It is necessary to support
communication between researchers, politicians, industry and also final users. It is
necessary to transfer all knowledge to the users.
• It is important that the requirements for standards are not defined only by politicians or by
large industry. Standards have to cover needs of users like farmers and regional and local
IST developers. Involvement of these communities is crucial.
• The food market is international and for example information about food traceability has to
be shared worldwide. It is important in this area to support standards worldwide.
As a reaction on single challenges there are the following recommendations:
• It is necessary to have a better coordination of different activities related to ICT for
agriculture, but also related to standardisation. On the basis of the performed analysis, it
seems not realistic to establish a new platform initiative. It is not only a question of financing,
but it is also a question of building infrastructure, human resources, etc. For this reason, the
project team recommends to move agriXchange under the umbrella of an existing
organisation. It will increase the chances for financing of future activities. As an umbrella
organisation, the European Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture (EFITA)
would be most suitable. The advantage to have a European body, representing the ICT Agri-
food sector, which could be an interesting partner for the European Commission and other
policy actors.., in particular for Initiatives such as the European Innovation Partnership.
• Currently ICT for agri-food sector is not covered by any policies and also there is no direct
support for such activities. The topic is addressed by different Directorate Generals (DGs),
but no DG covers this issue fully. It is important to include these topics as part of the
European priorities and also as part of Horizon 2020. From this reason, it is important to
have strong representative of a community, which will provide the necessary lobbing. On the
worldwide level, part of these activities is covered by FAO. But there are gaps between FAO
and the worldwide community. It is necessary to improve cooperation.
• Any RTD results and also results of standardisation have to be transferred into practice to
local and regional users. In the future, the agINFRA project could be of help. The project has
an objective to build infrastructure for sharing agriculture information.
• It is necessary to support open innovation initiatives in rural regions. It will be good to
introduce concept of “Smart Rural Regions” similar to Smart Cities.
Final SRA 17
19. • It is necessary to support standardisation cooperation also worldwide. FAO or the
International Network for Information Technology in Agriculture (INFITA) could play an
important role.
18 Final SRA
20. 1 Introduction
1.1 Background and scope
The objective of this report is to provide a Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) which reflects the
business demands for use of ICT and exchange of agriculture data, information and knowledge
supported by current standardisation, but also by future research in ICT for the agri-food industry. It
reflects the needs of the agriculture business. The focus of the SRA is on identifying major ICT
challenges related to the use of ICT and data, information, knowledge and standards in agriculture
and the agri-food industry sector. The agenda defines not only the necessary ICT standards, but also
in a broader view the Research and Technology Development (RTD) areas which will be selected as
key priorities to achieve the challenges identified. The wide deployment of data, information and
knowledge management, which will include ICT technologies, data, information and standards,
exchange of information and use of ICT standards specifically oriented to the agri-food industry, will
support the transformation of agriculture production into a competitive, sustainable and dynamic
Knowledge-Based Bio-Economy (KBBE) as well as facilitate the participation and ultimately the
complete integration of agricultural production into the Knowledge Society. The SRA is mainly
focused on the KBBE and ICT programmes within the EU FP7 Research Programme, but it is based
on activities on a regional and cross-regional level as well as within other EU programmes and
initiatives. It is critical to follow the main trends, but also to cooperate with the main industry and ICT
players involved. The definition of the SRA required a deep knowledge of problems of agriculture
data, information and knowledge interoperability, previous activities, existing standardisation
problems, the state of the art in the agri-food ICT area, but also consultations with representatives
from industry, governments, agencies, operators, and agri-food authorities and stakeholders involved
in rural development. The discussions with stakeholders during events such as the GeoFARMatics
conference in Cologne in 2010 or the EFITA congress in Prague 2011 played an important role. The
first version of the SRA was published in May 2012. The current document is presenting the final
version of strategic lines that, after validation of the draft version (mainly provided based on the
Smart AgriMatics conference and the Linked-In social network), will support all domain stakeholders
in the process of implementing a number of specific measures to achieve the stated objectives. This
document is the final version, but it is still open for comments. The goal of this SAR is to stimulate
future discussions. For this reason, the document is published under the Common Creative License
to support its re-use and further exploitation of the collected ideas. The objective of the document is
to stimulate discussion. ICT in agriculture is a very dynamic sector and it requires the continual
updating of ideas. On the other hand, the analysis of previous activities demonstrates that there is a
need for a long-time sustainability of ICT for agri-food research (many previous SRAs and other
strategic documents dispersed without any continuity and also accessibility of previous documents).
1.2 Problem
The agriculture sector is a unique sector due to its strategic importance for both European citizens
(consumers) and the European economy (regional and global), which, ideally, should make the
whole sector a network of interacting organisations. Rural areas are of particular importance with
respect to the agri-food sector and should be specifically addressed within this scope. There is an
increasing tension that has not been experienced in any other sector between the requirements to
Final SRA 19
21. ensure full food safety as well as sustainability while keeping costs under control. Also it is necessary
to ensure the long-term strategic interests of Europe and worldwide [1], also with regard to food
security and global challenges. To solve the problems of future farming, we need to develop a new
generation of knowledge management, which will help the agri-food sector to adopt to a changing
world. The objective of future knowledge management is to help the agri-food sector to be
competitive in the market in the sense of required products, quality and amount, to be able to react to
changes in the world market, changes in subsidies systems, requirements for environment
protection, but also to be able to react for example to increasing costs of inputs or to climate
changes. The future knowledge management systems have to support not only direct profitability of
the agri-food sector or environment protection, but also activities of individuals and groups, allowing
effective collaboration among groups in the agri-food industry and consumers and wider
communities, especially in the rural domain. Having these considerations in mind, the proposed
vision lays the foundation for meeting ambitious but achievable operational objectives that in the long
run will definitively contribute to fulfil identified needs. The knowledge management represents the
on-going relationship between people, processes and technology systems involved in designing,
capturing and implementing the intellectual infrastructure of an organisation. It encompasses the
necessary changes in management attitudes, organisational behaviour and policy. Knowledge
management should create a value for the customer and increase the profitability of farms. It is clear
from the definition that knowledge management goes one step further than the simple concept of
information systems and data exchange and entails other two factors, people and processes [2]. This
will require better exchange of information, but also the adoption of new scientific and research
results in the agri-food sector.
The discussions on social networks demonstrate the growing importance of bottom-up activities,
collaboration and social media. Open innovation and open data access are important for future rural
development. Such activities as Living Labs could help rural regions in future. For the urban
population there is a growing activity called Smart Cities. It is important to support similar activities for
rural regions - Smart Rural Regions.
1.3 Objectives of study
The objective of the SRA is to identify major challenges related to the use of standards identified in
agriculture and agri-food industry sector. The agenda defines Research and Technology
Development areas which will be selected as key priorities to achieve the challenges identified. The
future wide deployment and use of standards, which will be specifically oriented to the agri-food
industry, will support the transformation of agriculture production into competitive and dynamic
knowledge-based economy, as well as facilitating the participation and ultimately the complete
integration of the EU agriculture production into the Knowledge Society. The SRA is mainly focused
on KBBE and ICT within FP7 and Horizon2020, but also on sets of activities on a regional and
cross.-regional level as well as within other EU programmes and initiatives.
The second objective is to recommend a way for the long-term sustainability of the agriXchange
initiative.
1.4 Approach and outline
The SRA is not built from scratch. There are two main sources of ideas that are used and extended
in the agriXchange SRA. The first source are the results of previous activities. There were many
activities trying to define the future vision or the ICT and knowledge management in agriculture and
in a broader sense also in rural development. In many cases the project results disappeared together
20 Final SRA
22. with the project itself. The first part of our work was a deep analysis of previous work and to see what
was done, what was already overcome and what has been valid until now.
The second information sources were the results from WP2, WP3 and WP4 of agriXchange. The
analyses are used as an input and recommendation for the SRA. As was already stressed, the SRA
not only focuses on the standardisation process but also on defining priorities for future research.
This is done because future research priorities will define necessary standardisation tasks in ICT for
the agri-food sector.
A part of the recommendation is also a suggestion for the long-term sustainability of the agriXchange
initiative. The report is outlined as follows:
• Chapter 2 gives an introduction to the problem of standardisation of ICT in agriculture
• Chapter 3 gives a short overview of current standardisation initiatives relevant to
agriXchange
• Chapter 4 analyses previous projects and results of other WPs of agriXchange.
• Chapter 5 focuses on current ICT trends and their potential implementation in the agri-food
sector
• Chapter 6 defines future research and political challenges for ICT in agri-food sector.
• Chapter 7 focuses on defining future research priorities in ICT applications for agri-food
sector.
• Chapter 8 defines ICT research priorities given by needs of applications.
• Chapter 9 answers the question how research priorities in ICT for agriculture will generate
new requirements for standardisation.
• Chapter 10 focuses on agriXchange long-term sustainability and on the definition of political
priorities for the next period.
The final version was prepared on the basis of discussions about the draft SRA during the AgriMatics
2012 conference in Paris and by mainly using moderated discussions on Linked-In and comments
from the project partners. The results of all the discussions were used for finalising the SRA.
Final SRA 21
23. 2 ICT for Agriculture
Interoperability
2.1 Data, information and knowledge
For every discussion about knowledge or information management it is important to better
understand basic terms such as data, information and knowledge. It is also important to understand
the problems of interoperability and standardisation. For a better explanation we will use the Data-
Information-Knowledge-Wisdom hierarchy (Figure 3).
• Data: as symbols;
• Information: data that are processed to be
useful; provides answers to "who", "what", "where",
and "when" questions;
• Knowledge: application of data and
information; answers "how" questions;
• Wisdom: evaluated understanding.
Figure 3 The Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom hierarchy of Ackoff [3]
A further elaboration of Ackoff's definitions follows:
• Data... data is raw. It simply exists and has no significance beyond its existence (in
and of itself). It can exist in any form, usable or not. It does not have meaning of
itself. In computer parlance, a spreadsheet generally starts out by holding data
• Information... information is data that has been given meaning by way of relational
connection. This "meaning" can be useful, but does not have to be. In computer
parlance, a relational database makes information from the data stored within it.
• Knowledge... knowledge is the appropriate collection of information, such that it's
intent is to be useful. Knowledge is a deterministic process.
• Wisdom... wisdom is an extrapolative and non-deterministic, non-probabilistic
process. It calls upon all the previous levels of consciousness, and specifically upon
special types of human programming (moral, ethical codes, etc.). It beckons to give
us understanding about which there has previously been no understanding, and in
doing so, goes far beyond understanding itself. It is the essence of philosophical
probing.” [4]
For the future analysis of agriXchange, important are the first three terms data, information and
knowledge, which define three levels related to the management of farms. The wisdom could be
understood as part of decision processes.
22 Final SRA
24. We have defined three levels of management:
• Data Management;
• Information Management;
• Knowledge management.
Data management includes
• Data governance;
• Data Architecture, Analysis and Design;
• Database Management;
• Data Security Management;
• Data Quality Management;
• Metadata Management;
• Document, Record and Content Management;
• Reference and Master Data Management.
Information management includes
• Records management;
• Can be stored, catalogued, organised;
• Align with corporate goals and strategies;
• Set up a database;
• Use for day-to-day optimum decision-making;
• Aims for efficiency;
• Data with a purpose.
Knowledge management includes
• A framework for designing an organisation’s goals, structures, and processes to add value;
• Collect, disseminate, use of information;
• Align with corporate goals and strategies;
• Focus on cultivating, sharing, and strategising;
• Connecting people to gain a competitive advantage;
• Information with a purpose.
It is clear that we have to look at the problem of agriculture standardisation from different angles. It is
evident that the focus on standardisation only on data level is too narrow and will not be able to cover
the needs of the agri-food sector. In the future, the main effort has to be on the level of
standardisation of information and knowledge.
2.2 Standardisation need for the agriculture sector
Future Farm deliverable 3.1[5] says that a farmer needs to manage a lot of information to make
economically and environmentally sound decisions. Such a process is very labour intensive because
most parts have to be executed manually. The farm activities include the monitoring field operations,
managing the finances and applying for subsidies, depending on different software applications.
Farmers need to use different tools to manage monitoring and data acquisition onǦline in the field.
They need to analyse information related to subsidies, and to communicate with tax offices, product
resellers etc. These needs are portrayed in Figure 4.
Final SRA 23
25. Figure 4 Relationship between farm management and its environment (from Sörensen et al. [6])
Any decision on farm level requires intensive data, information and knowledge flows. It requires
many different tools. Interoperability plays an important role.
2.3 Interoperability on farm level
Effective use of ICT management tools, decision support, accounting systems, tools for precision
farming etc. require intensive sharing of all:
• Data – for example from machinery, loggers etc.;
• Information – exchange of information with public bodies, consumers etc.;
• Knowledge – it is important for farm management systems to be able to understand the
content of information from different external resources.
Interoperability on the farm level cannot be reduced to simple data structures and protocols, but that
has to be fully understood. Agriculture standardisation is a broad subject that overlaps different other
standardisation efforts. The task for the agriXchange initiative is to decide where to share standards
from other initiatives and where to focus the effort of our own standardisation activities.
For standardisation, it is important to know what we have to standardise and why. We need to
analyse the main challenges of ICT for agriculture. These challenges will be used later on to define
what we have to standardise. It is also important to follow the main research trends, because in some
cases future technologies could overcome some standardisation problems.
24 Final SRA
26. 3 Standardisation
This chapter gives a brief overview of existing standardisation efforts that are important for
agriXchange. It also describes the results from WP4.
3.1 Current standardisation initiatives
3.1.1 ISO
ISO is the International Organization for Standardization, which develops and publishes international
standards. ISO standards ensure that products and services are safe, reliable and of good quality.
For businesses, they are strategic tools that reduce costs by minimising waste and errors and
increasing productivity. They help companies to access new markets, level the playing field for
developing countries and facilitate free and fair global trade. [7]
3.1.2 W3C
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community where member organisations,
a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards. The W3C mission is to lead
the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure the long-
term growth of the Web. Below we discuss important aspects of this mission, all of which further
W3C's vision of One Web. [8]
3.1.3 OASIS
OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit
consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of open standards for the global
information society. OASIS promotes industry consensus and produces worldwide standards for
security, Cloud computing, SOA, Web services, the Smart Grid, electronic publishing, emergency
management, and other areas. OASIS open standards offer the potential to lower costs, stimulate
innovation, grow global markets, and protect the right of free choice of technology. [9]
3.1.4 OGC
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is an international industry consortium of 478 companies,
government agencies and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly
available interface standards. OGC® Standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the
Web, wireless and location-based services and mainstream IT. The standards empower technology
developers to make complex spatial information and services accessible and useful with all kinds of
applications. [10]
3.1.5 IEEE
IEEE is the world's largest professional association dedicated to advancing technological innovation
and excellence for the benefit of humanity. IEEE and its members inspire a global community
through IEEE's highly cited publications, conferences, technology standards, and professional and
educational activities. IEEE, pronounced "Eye-triple-E," stands for the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers. The association is chartered under this name and it is the full legal name. [11]
Final SRA 25
27. 3.1.6 VDMA – ISOBUS
ISOBUS is managed by the ISOBUS group in VDMA. The VDMA (VerbandDeutscherMaschinen-
und Anlagenbau - German Engineering Federation) is a network of around 3,000 engineering
industry companies in Europe and 400 industry experts.
The ISOBUS standard specifies a serial data network for control and communications on forestry or
agricultural tractors. It consists of several parts: General standard for mobile data communication,
Physical layer, Data link layer, Network layer, Network management, Virtual terminal, Implement
messages applications layer, Power train messages, Tractor ECU, Task controller and management
information system data interchange, Mobile data element dictionary, Diagnostic, File Server. The
work for further parts is ongoing. It is currently ISO standard ISO 11783. [12]
3.1.7 agroXML
agroXML is a standard facilitating data exchange in agriculture and other sectors in contact with
agriculture. agroXML is developed by the KTBL and partners among makers of agricultural software
systems, machinery companies and service providers. agroXML is based on the internationally
standardised eXtensible Markup Language (XML). It consists of schemas complemented by content
lists. The schema is designed in a modular way. The English language is used for data type and
element names and the documentation. Essential modules with definitions concerning the farm and
plant production are currently available, modules for livestock farming are in development. [13]
3.1.8 INSPIRE
In Europe a major recent development has been the entering in force of the INSPIRE Directive in
May 2007, establishing an infrastructure for spatial information in Europe to support Community
environmental policies, and policies or activities which may have an impact on the environment.
INSPIRE is based on the infrastructures for spatial information established and operated by the 27
Member States of the European Union. The Directive addresses 34 spatial data themes needed for
environmental applications, with key components specified through technical implementing rules.
This makes INSPIRE a unique example of a legislative “regional” approach. [14]
3.2 agriXchange results
A part of the agriXchange work in WP4 agriXchange team focused on the basic design of the generic
integration framework for data, information and knowledge exchange harmonisation and
interoperability based on selected use cases. The project worked with two levels of use case
descriptions.
• The first is a “wide scope” use case description, covering a whole domain-specific procedure
fulfilling the user needs, for example fertilising procedures from planning to execution,
consisting of a chain of processes, actors and data-exchange transactions.
• The “narrow scope” description serves as a meta-data model of the interface, where the
context of the data transaction of that specific interface is briefly described.
The agriXchange WP4 effort focused on two aspects:
• the structure of the framework model serves information sharing and harmonisation
development of the data exchange, and
• the implementation of the practical model tool (aXTool) in the agriXchange platform has to
be user-friendly.
26 Final SRA
28. The agriXchange Reference Framework design contains functionalities such as search, contribute,
discussion and evaluation by user experience, and also a mechanism for quality management. The
design serves different interest groups with their focus on either wide-scope use cases or narrow-
scoped interface solutions, and assists in interactions between the scopes [15].
From the user point of view, the agriXchange Reference Framework should serve four main
functions: searching for existing solutions interlinked with any open (standardised) interface,
contributing (to) existing solutions, discussion and evaluation of solutions. The Reference Framework
tool should provide information in details that suit user’s demand in different phases of a system
development process.
Classification of contributed information according to the agriXchange Reference Information Model
(aXRIM) is a backbone for the generic integration framework and provides the foundation for the
relevant functionalities of the aXTool, like relevant and efficient search functions. The main classes of
aXRIM are Process, Actors, Communication protocol and Data. The aXRIM includes elements which
concern Technical architecture and Technical communication infrastructure (Class: Communication
protocol) and Organisational embedding (Class: Actors).
Users can be classified as developers, modellers and business users depending on the scope of
their interest. The users can represent specific groups of narrow interest areas or wider themes.
When contributing, users follow a certain work flow through which the aXTool gives guidance. The
quality maintenance requires the contributors to identify their name, the organisation and community
they represent, and the contact information. Also, collected user experiences of already existing
solutions that are also shared by other contributors, are utilised to describe the quality of a certain
solution [16].
Wide-scope use case descriptions serve the development and optimisation of farming, food logistics
and trading systems which capture several sub-systems, actors and stakeholders. Narrow-scope
interfaces focus on single data exchange interfaces and actors and processes around them, and the
level of information detail is higher, including technical details, standards and other implementation
instructions. For this level, one of the key factors in data exchange is the sharing of vocabularies. In
many cases, each data exchange solution has its own specific vocabulary. To increase cost
efficiency in constructing an interoperable system, the harmonising of vocabularies is essential. The
aim of the information modelling of the two use cases is to give a high-level understanding of the
content of the information to be exchanged between the parties or actors involved. Gathering the
data content from different use cases to the agriXchange collection gives a good ground for further
analysis and harmonisation of the vocabulary in the agri-food sector [17].
3.3 Conclusion
Almost all of the described standardisation efforts have some effect on the agri-food sector. Initiatives
such as ISOBUS or agroXML could in future be interconnected with agriXchange initiatives in some
way; the agriXchange community could contribute to some standardisation efforts with requirements
directly from agri-food community and some standards will be simply adopted by the community.
From the work in WP4 it is clear that an important part of future standardisation efforts will be related
to concrete processes, decision making, etc. Standardisation on the level of data exchange is
required (ISOBUS, IEEE standardisation in sensors communication protocols, etc.), but increasingly
also on the level of information exchange and in future also on the level of knowledge (for example
semantic).
Final SRA 27
29. Another important aspect is that current standardisation initiatives are publicly driven or driven by
large industries (W3C, OGC, OASIS). For ICT in the agri-food sector it is important to support the
participation of Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in standardisation processes or minimally
support free access of SMEs to existing standards. The participation of SMEs in the development of
agri-food applications is very high, but the participation of SMEs in standardisation initiatives is very
low (SMEs have no capacity to participate in these activities and to contribute to standards). This
could lead to situations where current standards do not fit the needs of agri-food ICT well. It is
necessary to find the way (granting, networking activities) to support participation of SMEs in
standardisation activities.
28 Final SRA
30. 4 Overview of past
activities
ICT for agriculture, food, environment and rural development is not a new issue. There were many
activities and initiatives during the last years. New research projects very often start from scratch
without taking into account results from previous activities. Therefore, we decided to include this
chapter to show some project results performed mainly during the first decade of the 21st century.
We expect this chapter can provide a good overview of how ideas have changed, what was reached
and where progress can be shown. It is based on an analysis of supporting and coordination actions
and key declarations with a focus on future strategies in the area of ICT for agriculture, food, rural
development and environment. This analysis includes a short overview of the results or
recommendations from the projects and studies and a list of previous declarations: To complete this
study, part of the analysis is taken from WP2 [18]
• Aforo Roadmap
• Rural Wins Recommendation
• Valencia Declaration
• eRural Brussels conference conclusions
• Prague Declaration
• aBard vision
• ami@netfood Strategic Research Agenda
• The vision on the future value chain for 2016 by the Global Commerce Initiative
• Study on Availability of Access to Computer Networks in Rural Areas
• The research agenda of the European Platform for Food for Life
• Future Farms recommendations
• The Research Agenda and the Action Plan by the Technology Platform for Organic Food
and Farming
• The third SCAR Foresight exercise
• Cologne Declaration supported by agriXchange
• Vision, Strategic Research Agenda and Third Implementation Action Plan (2009) of the
European Agriculture Machinery Industry (Subplatform AET of the Technology Platform
MANUFUTURE
• ICT Agri Eranet
• agriXchange analysis of data exchange in agriculture in the EU27 & Switzerland
This chapter is prepared as an overview and a review of existing outputs and publications from the
above mentioned projects.
4.1 Aforo
The objective of the AFORO [19] project (running in 2002 and 2003) was to provide a vision and
work plan to implement future RTD trends for the transformation of agri-food industries into digital
enterprises. The AFORO consortium split the agri-food domain into several more "manageable"
sectors. Each of them had its own roadmap. The selected sectors were:
(a) primary sources,
Final SRA 29
32. • To develop market knowledge supporting innovative value added products, processes and
business strategies.
• To design and develop interoperability tools for European logistic and services.
• To design a European Agri-food Information System including materials, technologies, and
results of RTD activities.
• To support the transformation of agri-food business into an effective collaborative
organisation.
For every issue the situation As is was analysed and the roadmap To be was defined. For detailed
recommendations, see [20].
4.2 Rural Wins
The objective of Rural Wins [21] (2002 – 2003) was to build a strategic RTD roadmap developing an
information and communications technologies’ vision to ensure the economically and technically
feasible deployment of information and communication solutions for rural areas including also
maritime regions and islands.
The project provided an analysis of:
• the trends in technology development,
• the needed equipment,
• the deployment of services.
Different scenarios of joint public and private initiatives and business models were analysed to
reduce the discriminatory gap that nowadays exists between rural and urban areas with regard to
broadband accessibility and applications’ deployment. Rural Wins use the following classification of
rural areas (based on typology of DG Region)
1. Integrated rural areas - territories with a growing population, an employment basis in the
secondary and tertiary sectors, but with farming remaining an important land use. The
environmental, social and cultural heritage of some of these areas, relatively close to big
cities, may be under pressure of "urbanisation". The rural character of some of these areas
is at risk of becoming predominantly suburban.
2. Intermediate rural areas - relatively distant from urban centres, with a mixture of primary and
secondary sectors; in many countries larger scale farming operations can be found.
3. Remote rural areas - areas with the lowest population densities, the lowest incomes and an
older population. These areas depend heavily on agricultural or fishing employment and
generally provide the least adequate basic services
For all three types of rural areas, the barriers that need to be addressed by Broadband ICTs are
identified as:
• Distance barriers - access to administrative and governmental services and structures
(taxes, subsidies etc.).
• Economic barriers - access to wider business and labour markets (suppliers, customers,
opportunities).
• Social barriers of rural inhabitants to information, education & training facilities, health, social
services etc.
Final SRA 31
33. • Information barriers – currently the amenities of many rural areas are "invisible" to the
"outside world" (inhabitants of other areas, urban centres or citizens of other states - rural
tourism, local products etc.).
Based on the analysis of socio-economic and technology trends, the project concluded that for Rural
Broadband access the following is needed:
• Public/Private Partnerships;
• New access technologies.
The project developed a strategic roadmap template that provides a simple, coherent and complete
framework to describe the ICT requirements and issues for rural and maritime areas (Figure 6).
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Figure 6 Framework of the Rural Wins project to describe ICT requirements and issues for rural
and maritime areas.
The framework consists of 4 dimensions:
1. Vision/Policy,
2. Awareness,
3. Technology/Infrastructure
4. Services/Applications
These were identified for each of the Rural Wins’ (a) Integrated, (b) Intermediate (c) Remote types
of rural and maritime areas.
Using this framework, the following concrete scenarios are identified for each type of rural area:
• Integrated areas
o ICT needs – similar to urban;
o Recommended – “standard” fibre/wired/mobile/WLAN;
o Objectives – full parity and use with urban areas;
32 Final SRA
34. o Implementation – commercial;
• Intermediate areas
o ICT needs – distributed “economies of scope”;
o Recommended – some fibre/wire/mobile/WLAN to towns, satellite/WLAN elsewhere;
o Objectives – competitive SMEs access by all to all services;
o Implementation – public/private partnerships;
• Remote areas
o ICT needs – part of regional economic, social cultural development;
o Recommended – satellite/WLAN - new access approaches are required;
o Objectives – ubiquitous fixed mobile services to overcome barriers;
o Implementation – public funding, public/private community partnerships.
The use of bi-directional broadband satellite links and local/community owned and operated wireless
LANS (particularly Meshs of Wi-Fi (802.11a/b) wireless cells) are identified as being particularly
relevant eRural access technologies for remote rural areas.
Rural Wins promotes “eRural” policy. The eRural Integrated project (eRural IP) has to adopt an
integrated and multidisciplinary approach across the whole value chain from technology to services
and awareness that will cover all RTD to eliminate the Urban/Rural Digital Divide. [22]
4.3 Valencia Declaration
The Valencia Declaration was the output of the European Conference “Information Society as Key
Enabler for Rural Development” organised in Valencia, on 3 and 4 February 2003. The Valencia
Declaration addressed the following issues [23]:
• INFRASTRUCTURES AND SERVICES - telecommunications infrastructures must provide
the same level of information transmission and of technology and knowledge transfer. Due
to low population density and weak economic activity in rural areas, it is necessary to design
an optimal convergence model to deploy broadband telecommunications networks. Public
administration has to support the deployment of such an infrastructure, offering a strategic
framework of cooperation and reinforcing the process of telecommunications liberalisation.
Member States should address communications infrastructures and their contents in rural
areas as a strategic priority. This will require implementation of European Authorities'
suggestions regarding the development of information society national and regional plans,
through the development of infrastructures (broadband) as well as services. With regards to
services to citizens, it must be taken into account that one of the reasons for the
depopulation of rural areas is that urban areas provide services to which rural population has
no access. The use of ICT could be the key to overcome this situation. The following is
already available but needs to be enhanced: direct access to administrations (e-
Government), particularly the remote delivery of traditional public services, such as health
(e-health), social assistance, education and lifelong learning (e-learning).
• TRADITIONAL SECTORS AND NEW BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES – it is necessary to use
ICT to gain major benefits through becoming a part of the information society. With regards
to the traditional sectors in rural areas (agriculture, livestock, fishing, forestry and food
industries) it is worth mentioning the following benefits:
Final SRA 33
