AgGateway and the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA) are co-sponsoring the launch of a cross-industry collaboration project that will help growers better manage water and energy use by integrating weather, soil moisture, soil type, crop and other relevant data coming from a wide range of hardware and software programs. The Precision Agriculture Irrigation Leadership (PAIL) Project will improve agriculture irrigation by developing a common set of data standards and formats to convert data for use in irrigation data analysis and prescription programs.

The objective of this project is have a common set of data standards and protocols used across the agriculture industry. With those in place, industry can deliver much more efficient, easy-to-use solutions for producers, which in turn will help them use available water and energy more effectively.

Producers and manufacturers currently report that it is difficult and time-consuming to make decisions on how much water to apply when and where. That’s because weather, soil moisture and other relevant data are stored in a variety of Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) formats and data sources.

Seventeen companies have already committed to participate, including Ag Connections, Agrian, AgSense, Campbell Scientific, CropMetrics, Crop IMS, Decagon Devices, Irrometer, Irrinet, John Deere, J.R. Simplot, MapShots, Monsanto, OnFarm Systems, Ranch Systems, Wysocki Produce Farms, Inc., and ZedX.

The first working session of the group took place last month; the goal is to have a draft set of data standards by AgGateway’s Annual Meeting in November, and to be able to run tests during spring plantings in 2014.