The Farm Hack River of Activity

Great to see some interest and enthusiasm around data standards! (usually a hard sell in my outreach work...)

Louis, NEFKE is in the very early stages of development, still (and hopefully always) very open to the participation and input of others like you. We're looking at the standards mentioned as a guide, but have a lot of work to do toward implementing them in a practical way.

The first thing we'll likely do is look at how we can better leverage and link existing organizational and network data via the Farm to Institution New England (http://www.farmtoinstitution.org/) and NEFOOD.org web sites when we migrate them to Drupal. We'll likely extend the VIVO ontology for that, possibly using the Drupal-based ontology editor Neologism Valeria Pesce used for AgriVIVO. This will be supported and articulated through group value network mapping exercises (http://www.valuenetworksandcollaboration.com/mapping.html) that will enable us to identify the critical pathways and relationships between transactional food value chain players, and the wider support networks. I can see this something like this possibly happening at one of the upcoming FarmHack gatherings, combining trained value network mapping facilitators with farmers, value chain intermediaries, support people (including info intermediaries like me) and programmers.

In terms of data sharing and staging, we'll be looking at ways Drupal can be used to shared linked data using tagging/metadata, e.g. via RDFa (http://www.slideshare.net/scorlosquet/how-to-build-linked-data-sites-with-drupal-7-and-rdfa). I'm hoping we can secure additional funding to do that in a more expansive way at some point. I'm having lunch with the former President of the Data Commons Cooperative (http://datacommons.find.coop/) in a couple weeks to explore that particular model.

One of the prerequisites for sharing and integrating data across actual and intellectual silos, and within larger decision making frameworks, are consistent and well documented open standards for creating/structuring and sharing/publishing that data. Here at Mann Library we've been working on that issue through our development of the VIVO network (http://www.vivoweb.org), which has evolved to include the USDA, and now internationally as AgriVIVO (http://www.agrivivo.net), using and extending the VIVO ontology (https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/VIVO/VIVO+Ontology). In several cases we've been able to capitalize on Drupal’s ability to both publish and ingest “linked data” like that generated through the VIVO network (see http://impact.cals.cornell.edu/).

Related efforts like the Open Food Data (http://open-food.org/) and the Coherence in Information for Agricultural Research for Development (http://ciard.net/) movements are working on this as well. Once we have agreed upon standards, it becomes much easier to develop shared tools and networks for using and repurposing data. This is illustrated through the explosion of easy to use GIS tools as the result of Geospatial Web Services.

I'd love to see the FarmHack community take this up in earnest, perhaps partnering with NESAWG on our Food Knowledge Ecosystem project (http://www.nefood.org/group/nesawgworkgroupforresearchassessments/forum/topics/northeast-food-knowledge-ecosystem), and others like AgSquared, and Public Lab.

I'm in Portland and have a lot of equipment. I'd ove to connect to more agriculture folks who want to do NDVI or other photo trials in Oregon. I'd be up for doing something sooner, and trying to track a plot over the spring and summer.

Hi Terry

You are welcome to post this project on your website - hopefully with a reference back to here :)

Something we've been investigating are ways to allow sites to share source to the same project. Kind of like the way branching and forking work in GitHub (we're actually exploring that as the back-end) - that way I could easily merge edits from your branch on ArduinoInfo. RJ might come along and tell you more about that.

Anyway, about collaboration, I'd love any contributions you'd have to the tool page here. I was planning to go through and try to simplify the page as much as possible soon anyway. I'd really appreciate your perspective on the general structure since you've no doubt spent a lot of type thinking about how tutorials need to be written.

--Louis

A while ago I started a wiki that I think picks up on some of this. Perhaps we could start to document the features and use cases with it.

http://farmhack.net/tools/universal-adaptive-management-software#forum

I think adding in the Apitronics detail is very exciting. I am working on a diagram and some mock screen shots to illustrate some possible interface ideas. Many of the soil health measures, like penetrometers, have digital readouts with integration to gps. The management data from crop treatments coupled with on the ground soil sampling with environmental monitoring(moisture, pH, temperature etc), aerial imagery and still images and spectral data combined would give a wealth of potential systems information both for management and research. I see this as the missing link for making imaging really useful too - see

http://farmhack.net/tools/ifarm-imaging-agricultural-research-and-manage...

In some sense, every farm is already a research farm, but an online data platform would enable the gathering of more data and facilitate sharing of this data to feed into decision support tools etc...

Inspecting fields. Counting cattle/goats/livestock. Checking for downed fence lines. Checking water, mineral trays, ...

Of course, you would need video on the UAV, and a high-speed data/video connection to its camera.

Weather is the biggest challenge - it can't be used in moderate wind or gusty conditions. So a fairly good "localized weather" station system might be in order too. Another challenge might be areas of high pollen concentration - depending on the drive mechanism for the UAV.

What we found is if we have to go to the field anyway, then we might as well do the inspection ourselves rather than fool with setting up and packing away a UAV. Having a fixed, computer controlled flight path for a large field might make it more worthwhile - but then there's problems with RC radio range.

This is something that I'm trying to position Apitronics to help with. Since many farms will have identical sensors deployed, the sensor specifications will be open of course, and the location will be paired with all the data being gathered, I think it could be a great component to the platform being proposed.

I would love to be part of this discussion and to hear what the research needs are. I will have my own practical uses for the data (primarily building physical models for simulations and automation) but I would love to know how to make the datasets more accessible to others.

Welcome to farm hack! It would be great to see documentation for your reefer truck. The best way to do that would be to start a tool wiki for the project. You can then add documentation as you go, and folks can comment using the related forums attached to the wiki. The tool wiki template is here http://farmhack.net/tools/tool-template - and there are some instructions for the wiki here. http://farmhack.net/tools/farmhacknet

I think there will be a lot of interest in your project!

Hi group,
I'm interested in connecting with people who are involved in local food distribution logistics. I have a small business in southwest Colorado called Local Food Logic LLC, and a service called SanJuanFarmFresh.com. I started service last spring with a pickup truck and four coolers, which turned into a flatbed pickup with 14 coolers, and then a 2-ton GMC with a reefer box, and over the last year and a half I've been converting a former Uhaul diesel into a DIY reefer truck, which will be this season's rig. Is anyone out there running or building small reefer trucks who would like to share opinions and facts? Also, I would love to share more details about the process of my reefer truck build somewhere on farmhack. Which sections would be best for this?
Thanks a lot and look forward to sharing.
Ole Bye

I got that DOC file downloaded but I haven't had a chance to start converting it to Markdown yet. I do however now have a good example of how to structure documentation on Github! Check out the Video Book Manual on GitHub. I've been working on that for Open Learning Exchange here in Ghana and I just made it public! :)