Geospatial data in agriculture – update and next steps

Spatial information underpins almost everything we do in agriculture. For every piece of big data that has a when and a what, there is also a where.

Challenges in the New Zealand and Australian contexts include:

• defining what is an operating farm
•  how should land reserved for biodiversity, wetlands, riparian zones, and forestry be represented in a farming system; and
•  how could common information about spatial activities be shared across all the software tools a farmer might use.

In 2021, a group of New Zealand and Australian agricultural and agritech organisations started defining a “common specification” for spatial data in agriculture. Not reinventing the wheel, this work extends open geospatial consortium specifications and aligns with international standards. That work is now ready to start its next phase.

Could your business make use of the common specification already developed? Do you have ideas or needs that should be included in the next phase of work? And how can farmers and technologists start making use of common information about farms?

Aligned with AgriTech New Zealand, and the AgriTech Industry Transformation Plan.

Supported by: