Faculty from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln are leading a federally funded initiative to develop a national cyber-ecosystem for agricultural producer data. The project recently advanced with a strategic visioning session during a national planning conference in Lincoln.

The National Agricultural Producers Data Cooperative conference, held Aug. 8-9 on UNL’s East Campus, featured academics, industry scientists and representatives from producer groups. Objectives discussed include outreach and coordination with ag producers and industry; collaboration among successful existing data projects; and strategies to enable the projects’ long-term viability.

Jennifer Clarke, who is part of a group of Husker faculty leading the initiative, said the meeting was productive.

“The main takeaway is we are solving and will continue to solve problems for producers around data,” said Clarke, professor of statistics and food science and technology, and director of UNL’s Quantitative Life Sciences Initiative. “That is really the value of bringing this group together — prioritizing what problems to solve for now and the future.”

The initiative has been funded since 2021 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Its primary goal is to equip producers with tools and services to manage and access their ag data with adequate privacy and security assurances.

A central theme of the conference was … (continue reading)

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