Members and leaders of the AgGateway organization have launched an affiliate non-profit organization, AgGateway Global Network (AGN), that seeks to promote and establish global collaboration and coordinated use of global agricultural eBusiness standards, guidelines and implementation processes. The new organization will be led by Rod Conner, who is leaving his post as President and CEO of AgGateway at the end of this year to head the newly formed organization.

AGN will be made up of various regional organizations from around the globe that can work through AGN to share and contribute to the AgGateway Open Standards and Implementation Guidelines, and to promote, enable and expand eBusiness in agriculture globally.

“We will share the successes that AgGateway has achieved with regional eBusiness-focused organizations, to help address the reality that the world has become ever smaller in terms of the global supply chain,” Conner said. “The significance of AGN is that best practices and standards that have been proven to be successful in certain regions of the world can be shared with other regions to enhance productivity, profitability and sustainability for everyone.”

Conner said several factors make the timing right for AGN: Customers and suppliers everywhere expect immediate, accurate information; there is a continued streamlining of the global supply chain; markets today are more volatile and more global in nature; food safety and traceability have become business imperatives throughout the world; and agriculture as a whole needs to produce more food with fewer resources through precision agriculture, sustainability and better technology.

AGN is expected to provide additional benefits to AgGateway members in North America, since more than 60 of AgGateway’s 200-plus member companies conduct business globally.

“AgGateway members are supportive of the new AGN organization. They want to leverage their existing eBusiness investment and increase the number of trading partners that use the technologies. It’s also important for agricultural companies to find a way to coordinate and collaborate on standards, so that conflicting standards are not developed,” Conner said.

In addition to Conner’s appointment as Executive Director, the AGN Board of Directors has also appointed Jim Wilson as AGN Executive Vice President and Standards Director. Wilson is currently AgGateway’s Standards Director and will continue to work in that role. He will now expand his focus to address the coordination of standards and implementation guidelines among various world regions to help ensure international harmonization.