Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, along with Bill Gates, and U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park, today kicked off a two-day international open data conference, saying that data “is among the most important commodities in agriculture” and sharing it openly increases its value.

Among some of the speakers will be USDA Chief Scientist Dr. Catherine Woteki and Dr. Simon Liu, Director of the National Agricultural Library. They will explain that data is among the most important commodities in the world.

At the conference, the U.S. Government is also releasing an action plan to highlight a number of new and ongoing U.S. Government efforts.

To get the full schedule of the conference click here.

There is a live streaming of the conference and you can tweet about the conference with the hashtag, #OpenAgData.