A CONSORTIUM of leading agrifood stakeholders including government, industry and research bodies has announced the establishment of the Australian AgriFood Data Exchange to enable fluid collaboration up and down the supply chain.
With a vision to establish an open-data platform controlled by users, the Australian AgriFood Data Exchange will act as a trusted and secure interconnected data highway for the exchange of vital information between organisations and systems within the agriculture and agribusiness supply chain.
The exchange was initiated by Integrity Systems, a subsidiary of Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) and KPMG, and has received an initial $4 million funding from the Federal Government, MLA, Charles Sturt University (CSU), the Food and Agribusiness Growth Centre (FIAL), Fisheries Research Development Corporation, the Victorian Government, CSIRO, the Western Australian Government and Australian Wool Innovation (AWI).
Additional supporters include the New South Wales Government, Cotton Research Development Corporation, AgriFutures, Australian Eggs, Elders Rural, Federation University, Grower Group Alliance, Australian Plant Phenomics Facility and the Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation.
Federal Minister for Agriculture and Northern Australia, David Littleproud, said the Australian Government’s investment in exchange directly aligns with its Agricultural Innovation Agenda by establishing a next-generation digital platform for our data.
“Market access for our products depends on trusted supply chains and trusted compliance and quality assurance data accompanying the products,” Mr Littleproud said.
“This project is another example of how the Australian Government is backing Australia’s agriculture, forestry and fisheries industries to access and grow export earnings as the industry strives to meet and exceed its $100 billion farmgate value target by 2030.”
A steering committee led by independent chairman Andrew Robb is responsible for project governance, and major supporters are the Federal Government, MLA, CSU and the Food & Agriculture Growth Centre (FIAL), with KPMG serving as the project management office.
Mr Robb said data was the lifeblood of any industry.
“The Australian AgriFood Data Exchange is a nation-building project that will support the growth and resilience of the Australian agrifood industry by building a secure and trusted framework for data to be shared across the sector.
“This will create transformational opportunities to innovate and supercharge Australian agriculture.”
Following industry consultation, prioritised use cases of the Australian AgriFood Data Exchange include:
reducing the burden of regulatory compliance;
identifying and anticipating biosecurity risks;
benchmarking performance to inform decision-making; and,
bringing traceability to the entire value chain.
Further use cases will be considered as additional funding comes into the project.
An advisory council led by FRDC and the Victorian Government has also been established, supported by Working Groups and an Expert Panel consisting of producers, growers, logistics providers, manufacturers, retailers, researchers, regulators and other value chain representatives that will provide insights and feedback to help guide the design of the Australian AgriFood Data Exchange.
“Integrity Systems is proud to have taken a leadership position to seed fund the initiative in collaboration with KPMG Australia,” ISC CEO Dr Jane Weatherley said.
This funding enabled the initial phase of the project including extensive industry consultation to co-design a vision and validate support for, the establishment of an Australian AgriFood Data Exchange.”
“What became apparent throughout this process was the opportunity this presented to the whole of the Australian food and agriculture sector.”
“An industry-wide data exchange is the critical infrastructure that will help the Australia’s food and beverage industry to enhance the quality and assurance of products, and provide opportunities for value differentiation against other leading agrifood exporting nations,” FIAL managing director Mirjana Prica said.
The next phase for the exchange will see the development of a comprehensive business case inclusive of independent risk assurance processes, along with the development of a data-governance framework and operating model.
This will be informed by an experimentation process with technology vendors across each of the prioritised use cases.
About the exchange
The Australian AgriFood Data Exchange has a vision to create an interconnected data highway for Australia’s AgriFood value chain. It seeks to provide a digital platform that enables:
The permissioned exchange of data between AgriFood industry participants;
Timely access to information that supports decision making for the AgriFood value chain;
Release management capacity;
Standardisation and consistency of industry data assets;
The capacity to adapt, incorporating new use cases for data exchange that deliver value and support resilience of AgriFood value chain participants’
Increased transparency of AgriFood industry data to support multiple use cases (e.g. regulatory compliance, collaboration between public & private data sets)
For more information or to register interest in being part of the Australian AgriFood Data Exchange visit www.ozagdx.com.au
Publsihed by: Grain Central, September 15, 2021 - https://www.graincentral.com/news/data-exchange-for-australian-agrifood-planned/
