Users can now search for more than 5,500 validated terms on AgGateway‘s AgGlossary.org.  The free site was launched last year and was created in the hopes of improving communication throughout the industry, including government and academia.  It is an online wiki platform for agriculture terms, definitions, acronyms, key words and synonyms.  At this point the AgGlossary has received more than 70,000 hits.

Recently the site has increased their terms and definitions thanks to two additions from ag organizations.  The American Society of Agricultural Biological Engineers has contributed their published standards, and the Farm Financial Standards Council added financial terms and definitions common to agriculture.

“The glossary came about because many people in agriculture were experiencing communication challenges due to multiple definitions for a single term or phrase. That confusion can impact the ease of development of effective ag technologies and software,” said Dennis Daggett, AgGateway’s Glossary Working Group Leader, and Senior Vice President for Strategic Initiatives at ProAg. “It took several years to get AgGlossary.org to a critical starting point, and we’re finding that it is already making a great contribution to industry efforts in developing new projects and programs. It saves a great deal of time when everyone can confirm that they’re using the same vocabulary, with the same meanings.”

One of AgGlossary.org’s strengths is that a core of its content has been contributed by authoritative third-party sources, The U.S. Department of Agriculture Risk Management Agency and AgGateway were early contributors to the success of the glossary. In addition, the glossary’s unique hierarchical authorization structure allows for one definition for a term to take precedence over another according to the contributing source. For example, the definition for a term from a legal body takes precedence over a definition made by someone from the general public.

There will be more information avaliable about AgGlossary.org at next week’s AgGateway Annual Conference in San Antonio, Texas.  The theme for the conference is eBusiness and hundreds of business and IT professionals will attend.