Open, community‑governed data standards and consented data flow cut integration cost and risk, speed delivery, and build trust across the value chain – lessons we can apply from open banking and today’s agrifood standards.
Recently agritech has leapt ahead, with remote sensing, drones and robotics, machine learning and AI moving us from record keeping to providing insights and action.
This fresh innovation is the accelerator, but interoperability is still agritech’s biggest brake. Custom adapters and one‑off data maps add cost, delay delivery, and erode trust.
I heard this loud and clear at a recent dairy event: great tech, but barriers to using and connecting limit the value of data to farmers and advisors. Open, community‑backed data standards and permissioned data‑sharing are the fastest way to unlock network effects in on‑farm innovation and across the agri‑food value chain.
Banking solved a similar problem through enabling regulation, open standards, and secure consent. Agrifood now has its own runway with ISO/TC 347 and open industry standards.
What open really means
An open standard is public, developed transparently by diverse stakeholders, and designed for low-cost implementation without vendor lock-in. Formal membership organisations use consensus-driven processes to ensure anyone can adopt without restrictive usage rights or a single vendor trap. Examples include:
- ICAR: The International Committee for Animal Recording uses working groups with broad representation. The ICAR Animal Data Exchange specification (ADE) is published under an open-source licence and can readily be adopted.
- AgGateway: Another global non-profit with a mission to drive connectivity in global agriculture, and a focus on cropping and machinery. The ADAPT Standard is also designed to be widely accessible and readily adopted.
Open protocols define how data moves through transfer and “handshake” protocols between systems. Open protocols underpin email and the web. In consent, Open Banking flows and strong customer authentication (SCA) are published protocols you can study and reuse.
What agritech can learn from open banking
Open banking did not just define APIs: it aligned data payloads, security profiles, the consent user experience, and language used. Once data standards stabilised, fintech innovation accelerated because a single integration pattern could be scaled across many institutions.
Two lessons that translate:
- Make consent explicit and revokable. UK Open Banking Guidance made purpose and benefit, data needed, duration of access, and downstream usage all clear and controllable. This could apply to agricultural data too, given many users of integrated open banking tools are also consumers and small businesses.
- Regulatory scaffolding helps but is not always needed. Australia’s Consumer Data Right (CDR) started with banks and is expanding to energy and telcos, guided by a dedicated Data Standards Body.
Map of Ag’s data consent frameworks are OAuth-based and model the explicit purpose/consent approach used in open banking (we don’t yet use the FAPI profile).
Why standards matter for agritech and the value chain
For developers and agritech product teams, an open specification reduces the cost and risk of integrations. Data mapping is not just about field names but requires deep dives into the meanings of data values, statuses, and code lists. With a common specification the original data controller maps once, from the system they know best, and everyone benefits.
Farmers and their trusted advisors gain transparency in how their data is accessed and used, simpler controls and ability to revoke access. Data becomes portable across tools and AI products without rekeying or copy-paste. This saves valuable time and increases accuracy.
Supply chains, financiers, and assurance bodies can use connected data, streamlined through open standards to enable verifiable disclosures without piling paperwork onto producers.
A case in point: Map of Ag uses connected farm data to pre-fill emission and sustainability tools. Producers give us feedback about the time they save from “compliance” activities, while our customers note that they get more precise results with less “round number” approximation.
Momentum you can plug into today
You can use existing standards for your integrations:
- ICAR ADE (Animal Data Exchange) is a production-proven open specification from the International Committee for Animal Recording. Its data schemas cover animals, groups, milking, movement, health, reproduction, and livestock monitoring.
- AgGateway ADAPT Standard provides schemas, code lists, and spatial formats for use in cropping and machinery operations.
- ISO/TC 347 (data-driven agrifood systems) is the new ISO technical committee aligning the above standards, addressing vocabularies, and gaps in animal, food, fibre, and urban farming systems. Talk to your national standards body about involvement.
Drawing on these reduces the risk of “choosing the wrong spec” or creating your own.
Use these three principles:
- Adopt before you invent: Use existing schemas and open specifications, and if something is missing, propose extensions rather than beginning again.
- Design consent like a product: Borrow the open banking customer experience patterns so producers and their advisors can easily see purpose, scope, duration, and revocation.
- Thin-slice integration: Start small with one or two high-value use cases. Prove them with a few partners using open specifications and consent, then scale.
How Map of Ag can help
Some organisations will build their own, specification-aligned integrations. If you want to go faster, Map of Ag can help with:
- Consultancy and guidance to adopt integrations and open APIs.
- Development capability to create integrations for legacy tools.
- Consent management and data aggregation from both legacy and modern sources into standards-based APIs with the Map of Ag data platform
If this might be relevant, feel free to contact us.
