Connecting Farmers to Digital Tools

Jeanne Lurvey, OpenTEAM Fellow at Pasa, shares highlights of her work!

Jeanne Lurvey is an OpenTEAM Fellow based at Pasa Sustainable Agriculture, a Pennsylvania-based sustainable agriculture association with a network of more than 5,000 farmers representing every production and scale with a united goal of advancing regenerative and equitable agriculture at home and in their communities.

Since joining the OpenTEAM community and participating in the pilot year of the Fellows Program, Pasa has been working to expand farmer’s use and awareness of OpenTEAM tools including SurveyStack, farmOS, the Farmer’s Coffeeshop, and Hylo through the Soil Health Benchmarking Study (SHBS). Jeanne, alongside Pasa’s Lead Research Coordinator Sarah Bay Nawa, is spearheading this work!

In 2020, Pasa started using SurveyStack as one method for collecting farm management data for the SHBS. Jeanne has been working to increase the number of farms using SurveyStack through online tutorials, farm visits, SurveyStack’s ‘request for submissions’ feature, email communications, and phone calls to farmers. Through these outreach efforts, Pasa has engaged farmers to use SurveyStack for the first time. ​

Beyond farm record data entry, Pasa is incorporating OpenTEAM digital tools into multiple touchpoints with farmers participating in the SHBS. Pasa’s emails, Farmers SHBS Resource Webpage, and farm visit literature all include SurveyStack as the preferred method for research data collection and a description of the different OpenTEAM tools available.

As a part of her work with the SHBS, Jeanne went out into the field to visit farms to collect research data and to connect with farmers about digital tools.

“While visiting farms, I learned about farmers’ different record keeping tools, their use cases, and strong interest in peer to peer learning,” said Jeanne. In connecting with farmers, she shared OpenTEAM’s mission and her role as a Fellow in supporting farmer’s learnings and collecting their feedback to help inform the digital tools in OpenTEAM’s ecosystem.

Pasa has also been collaborating with developers to prepare the Farmer’s Coffeeshop for piloting in 2023. The Farmer’s Coffeeshop is a visual benchmarking and social networking tool designed to support strategic decision-making on farms, encourage knowledge sharing, and improve the information cycle. 

Jeanne continues to engage in the OpenTEAM community, participate in working groups, join co-working sessions, produce presentations, and share feedback. As she poses questions to developers and shares ideas and feedback for the different digital tools, she builds relationships with developers and meets with other hubs to learn about how they are using tools for their research projects. Taking some of what she has learned, Jeanne put together a farmer panel that spoke to the different digital record keeping tools farmers use for their operation, fostering conversation and learning around the benefits of using digital tools and the value in farmer’s collecting their farm data.

As Jeanne reflects on her Fellows program experience thus far, she found that, “Partaking in different opportunities to learn from the OpenTEAM community has enriched my understanding of the interoperability of the tools and the strong vision and dedication the group has to supporting farmers and regenerative agriculture.”

The OpenTEAM Fellows Program operates with significant support from a $730,000 grant by the Walmart Foundation.

Code of Conduct

OpenTEAM Code of Conduct

Drafted and approved by OpenTEAM Secretariat, 10/13/2020
A more detailed Code can be found here.

Open Technology Ecosystem for Agricultural Management (OpenTEAM) is a collaborative community of farmers, scientists and researchers, engineers, farm service providers, and food companies that are committed to improving soil health and advancing agriculture’s ability to become a solution to climate change.

This code of conduct applies to all OpenTEAM community spaces, both online and in person.

While we operate under the assumption that all people involved with OpenTEAM subscribe to the shared principles of OpenTEAM, we take Code of Conduct violations very seriously. Therefore, violations of this Code may affect an individual’s ability to participate in OpenTEAM, ranging from temporarily being placed into online moderation to, as a last resort, expulsion from the community or in-person events. If you have any questions about our commitment to this framework and/or if you are unsure about any aspects of it, email secretariat@openteam.community and we will provide clarification.

In order to uphold the principles we support as an OpenTEAM we agree to the following code of conduct:

Our Pledge

We, as OpenTEAM members, contributors, and leaders, pledge to make participation in our community a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body size, visible or invisible disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.

We pledge to act and interact in ways that contribute to an open, welcoming, diverse, inclusive and healthy community.

Enforcement Responsibilities

The Secretariat is responsible for clarifying and enforcing our standards of acceptable behavior and will take appropriate and fair corrective action in response to any behavior that they deem inappropriate, threatening, offensive, or harmful.

The Secretariat has the right and responsibility to remove, edit, or reject comments, commits, code, wiki edits, issues, and other contributions that are not aligned to this Code of Conduct, and will communicate reasons for moderation decisions when appropriate.

Instances of abusive, harassing, or otherwise unacceptable behavior may be reported by emailing secretariat@openteam.community. To report an issue involving her/him, please email .

The Secretariat is obligated to respect the privacy and security of the reporter of any incident.

Attribution

This Code of Conduct was created collaboratively and drew from other CoCs, including those by Public Lab, International Congress of Marine Conservation 2016, Mozilla, Contributor-Covenant, and TransH4CK.

 

OpenTEAM Statement on racial equity in agriculture 

OpenTEAM Statement on racial equity in agriculture

Developed by: OpenTEAM Secretariat
10/25/2020

OpenTEAM is a collaborative network supporting the emergence and continued viability of a global food system that is a resilient driver of  healthy soil, healthy food for all, and racial equity to support thriving communities.

We acknowledge that agriculture has a troubled history of colonization, desertification, slavery and extraction.  

However we are now demanding more from agriculture, not just to produce more food, fiber and energy, but also to provide environmental services such as equitable access to clean air, water, habitat and biodiversity and be a catalyst for change in how we interact with each other and our environment. 

Our future agriculture must be liberating, not confining, and consciously work to undo the institutional injustices of the past that have limited our shared potential and disproportionately affected black, indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) and historically marginalized communities.  

  1. We must be deliberate in the tools and communities we co-create to assure that they do not perpetuate inequity, and do not speak For but With. 
  2. Instead we must actively work to build communities that are just, equitable, and inclusive and includes representation from BIPOC and historically marginalized communities. 
  3. We have the potential to shift the conversation from fighting over scarce resources towards sharing knowledge to create natural abundance and resilience and strength through diversity.    

As an OpenTEAM community, we commit to:

  1. BIPOC representation both in individual and organizational membership within our communities of practice. 
  2. Actively recruit and support BIPOC members for leadership within the community working groups.
  3. Elevate BIPOC speakers into “main stage” events to elevate stories and expand the conversation beyond working groups.
  4. Collaborate with our member organizations to build upon, reinforce and amplify their own efforts to address racial equity.
  5. Co-create design processes for OpenTEAM tools and technology, with the creation of greater equity and trust in agricultural value creation as a core objective.

The stakes are huge, and the choices we make will affect the quality of the civilization that we live in, the quality of the air and water, the species with whom we share the planet, our resilience to floods and droughts, the nature of conflict, and the climate and diversity that we leave the next generations.  

In order to harness the shared innovation that happens every day on every farm, in every backyard and realize the vast potential for sharing across a rich and diverse global network we must democratize the code for agriculture. To benefit us all, we must have equity and trust. The benefits are so great and the risks are so dire. We each need everyone everywhere to have access to the best possible agricultural knowledge because together we have the capacity to improve soil health faster than we thought possible. 

 

Wolfe’s Neck announces new initiative to improve soil health, combat climate change

FREEPORT– As part of a  $10 million collaboration, Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment is attempting a “farming revolution” to combat carbon emissions and the effects of climate change, according to the Freeport nonprofit’s executive director, David Herring.

Working with Stonyfield Organic, the USDA’s LandPKS project and the Foundation for Food and Agriculture, Wolfe’s Neck announced the launch of the Open Technology Ecosystem for Agriculture Management (OpenTEAM), a “farmer-driven, interoperable platform to provide farmers around the world with the best possible knowledge to improve soil health,” officials said in a news release.

It will provide “any farmer anywhere with free access to site-specific data, providing quantitative feedback on millions of acres of farmland by 2024.” This data allows farmers to make informed decisions about land-use management. 

“The sense of urgency right now could not be higher,” Herring said in an interview. “It’s time for action. This is action.”  

“In order to solve climate change there has to be an ‘all of the above’ strategy which includes reducing carbon emissions” with solar energy and other sustainable practices that do not require the use of fossil fuels, he explained. “The other piece that’s really critical is increasingly talked about as natural solutions. The way we are managing land on this earth has to dramatically change.” Advertisement

Nearly 40% of the earth’s land surface is used for various facets of agriculture, and according to Stonyfield Organic, agriculture is responsible for as much as 20% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.  In recent years, to more efficiently manage that land, farming practices have begun to move away from building soil health, Herring said. Plants take in Carbon Dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in the soil. Because of this, practices like tilling soil, for example, release a huge amount of carbon into the atmosphere, he said, and depletes the overall soil health. Healthy soil grows healthy crops. Healthy crops help make healthy humans. 

Climate change has had a tangible impact on farms in recent years with more frequent weather extremes. Rainfall in May of this year was higher than usual, he said, and July was the hottest on record in nearby Portland. Two years ago they experienced drought-like conditions throughout mid-summer. “These shifts are really one of the biggest challenges we’re facing as a farm,” he said. This is also why building soil health is important. 

“It helps farmers adapt to climate change,” he said. For example, “farms that have more organic matter (in their soil) are going to be more resilient to those extremes. Healthy soil can absorb water faster and store it for longer, creating a buffer against drought.” 

OpenTEAM will combine field-level carbon measurement with digital management records, remote sensing, predictive analytics and input and economic management decision support in a “connected platform that reduces the need for farmer data entry while improving access to a wide array of tools. The platform will support adaptive soil health management for farms of all scales, geographies and production systems,” according to the release. It will also help scientists better understand soil health by providing better, more reliable data. 

(Courtesy of Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment)

Asked about Wolfe’s Neck’s soil quality, Herring said there are some fields where organic matter is really high, and others where it isn’t, but that trying to compare their data to national averages only demonstrated the need for OpenTEAM.

“Getting this kind of information from farms just isn’t happening regularly, effectively or being shared through common databases so that we can create averages,” Herring said. “We want to make it easy for farmers to get this information so they can aspire to achieve continual improvement in their soil health,” he said. The more than $10 million public-private collaboration is funded by a $5 million grant from FFAR, with more than $5 million matching contributions, including a $200,000 grant from The Stonyfield Foundation and $200,000 in in-kind contributions and a grant from Stonyfield Organic.

Implementation will begin in the fall and testing will continue into the 2020 growing season at “hub farms” across the United States and into other countries. 

“It has to be on a large scale” if it is going to be impactful, Herring said. “This can’t be a thing that (just) the Wolfe’s Neck Centers of the world can do.” The goal is that by the end, every farm will become a research farm, and there are already hub farms starting work across the country. 

At the heart of OpenTEAM is the need for all of the various technological advancements in farming to be more accessible to farmers, no matter the size of their operations. Through the collaboration, they hope to create a “suite of tools” for farmers to implement on a grand scale using the open-source platform.Advertisement

Another goal is to incentivize the program so that farmers are not just getting paid for their product, but also for the outcomes– if they are practicing and managing their farms in a way that is helping solve some of the problems. The technology will help those outcomes be monitored, verified and reported to help benefit farmers. 

“Within a year or so we will be able to demonstrate and train other farmers about this program and this software so we can gather information and feedback,” Herring said, though admittedly, “From a farming perspective it probably won’t mean a lot right away.”

Wolfe’s Neck is uniquely suited to lead this charge, Herring said, because of its education and research components combined with its status as a mission-driven, working, organic farm and a nonprofit. With this collaboration, they are positioned to become what he called “a national leader of regenerative agriculture.”

hlaclaire@timesrecord.com

Global collaboration creates open source climate solutions

FREEPORT, Maine —Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture & the Environment, together with founding collaborators Stonyfield Organic, the USDA’s LandPKS project and Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR), today announced the launch of OpenTEAM, the first open source technology ecosystem in the world to address soil health and mitigate climate change. OpenTEAM is projected to provide quantitative feedback on millions of acres of farmland by 2024.

OpenTEAM, or Open Technology Ecosystem for Agricultural Management, is a farmer-driven, interoperable platform to provide farmers around the world with the best possible knowledge to improve soil health.

Currently, farmers are faced with an ever-expanding assortment of decision-making software; however, these tools often do not “communicate” with each other, making it difficult to transfer, share or use by farmers and scientists or in supply chains. With OpenTEAM, farmers are not only in control of their own data, but also able to enter data once to access all available tools in the OpenTEAM collaborative.

OpenTEAM offers field-level carbon measurement, digital management records, remote sensing, predictive analytics and input and economic management decision support in a connected platform that reduces the need for farmer data entry while improving access to a wide array of tools. The platform will support adaptive soil health management for farms of all scales, geographies and production systems. OpenTEAM will also accelerate scientific understanding of soil health by providing more high-quality data to researchers collaborating on the project.

In addition to the founding partners, more than one dozen partner organizations have joined to develop, fund, and implement OpenTEAM to date. These include The Soil Health PartnershipGeneral MillsColorado State University/USDA-NRCS Comet FarmApplied GeoSolutions, LLC; DNDC Applications, Research and Training; Dagan, Inc.; Michigan State University Global Change Learning LabSustainable Food Lab and Cool Farm AlliancePurdue University Open Technology and Systems Center (OATS)University of British Columbia Center for Sustainable Food SystemsRegen NetworkOur.SciQuick Carbon at Yale F&ESU.S. Cover Crop Council decision toolsSustainability Innovation Lab at Colorado (SILC); The University of Colorado Boulder; and FarmOS.

Wolfe’s Neck Center will coordinate OpenTEAM from its headquarters on more than 600 acres of conserved landscape and farmland on the coast of Maine. Implementation and demonstration will begin in fall 2019. Field testing will continue in the 2020 growing season across the U.S. and international hub farm networks.

“At Wolfe’s Neck Center, we are collaborating to create solutions that address climate change through regenerative agriculture,” said Dave Herring, executive director, Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture & the Environment. “OpenTEAM pairs agriculture with open source technology to accelerate soil health right here in Maine and around the globe.”

The more than $10 million public-private collaboration is made possible by a $5 million grant from FFAR, with more than $5 million matching contributions coming from across the network, including a $200,000 grant from The Stonyfield Foundation and $200,000 in in-kind contributions and a grant from Stonyfield Organic.

“Optimizing soil management practices not only improves soil health, but also protects the environment,” said FFAR’s Executive Director Sally Rockey. “At scale, OpenTEAM can improve soil management practices for farmers around the globe and mitigate the effects of climate change.”

“Stonyfield is strongly committed to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions,” said Britt Lundgren, director of organic and sustainable agriculture at Stonyfield Organic. “Over half of our emissions come from agriculture, so in order to hit our target we know we need to work with the farms who provide our ingredients and help them reduce their emissions and sequester more carbon. OpenTEAM will enable us to do this, and track farms’ progress so we can be confident we’re hitting our goals.”

“We are inspired by the level of collaboration, leadership and vision our OpenTEAM partners have provided,” said Dorn Cox, PhD, research director, Wolfe’s Neck Center. “Through the power of open technology, we aim to make what was invisible visible and in so doing the unvalued valuable.”

For more information on OpenTEAM or becoming an OpenTEAM partner, please contact Dr. Dorn Cox at dcox@wolfesneck.org.

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Global Collaborative Launches OpenTEAM to Address Soil Health and Mitigate Climate Change

FREEPORT, MAINE and WASHINGTON, D.C. — Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture & the Environment, together with founding collaborators Stonyfield Organic, the USDA’s LandPKS project and Foundation for Food and Agriculture (FFAR), today announced the launch of OpenTEAM, the first open source technology ecosystem in the world to address soil health and mitigate climate change. OpenTEAM is projected to provide quantitative feedback on millions of acres of farmland by 2024.

OpenTEAM, or Open Technology Ecosystem for Agricultural Management, is a farmer-driven, interoperable platform to provide farmers around the world with the best possible knowledge to improve soil health.

Currently, farmers are faced with an ever-expanding assortment of decision-making software; however, these tools often do not “communicate” with each other, making it difficult to transfer, share or use by farmers and scientists or in supply chains. With OpenTEAM, farmers are not only in control of their own data, but also able to enter data once to access all available tools in the OpenTEAM collaborative.

OpenTEAM offers field-level carbon measurement, digital management records, remote sensing, predictive analytics and input and economic management decision support in a connected platform that reduces the need for farmer data entry while improving access to a wide array of tools. The platform will support adaptive soil health management for farms of all scales, geographies and production systems. OpenTEAM will also accelerate scientific understanding of soil health by providing more high-quality data to researchers collaborating on the project.

To date, more than one dozen organizations have joined to develop, fund, and implement OpenTEAM. These include The Soil Health Partnership; General Mills; Colorado State University/USDA-NRCS Comet Farm; Applied GeoSolutions, LLC; DNDC Applications, Research and Training; Dagan, Inc.; Michigan State University Global Change Learning Lab; Purdue University Open Technology and Systems Center (OATS); University of British Columbia Center for Sustainable Food Systems; Regen Network; Our.Sci; Quick Carbon at Yale F & ES; U.S. Cover Crop Council decision tools; Sustainability Innovation Lab at Colorado (SILC); The University of Colorado Boulder; and FarmOS.

Wolfe’s Neck Center will coordinate OpenTEAM from its headquarters on more than 600 acres of conserved landscape and farmland on the coast of Maine. Implementation and demonstration will begin in fall 2019. Field testing will continue in the 2020 growing season across the U.S. and international hub farm networks.

“At Wolfe’s Neck Center, we are collaborating to create solutions that address climate change through regenerative agriculture,” said Dave Herring, executive director, Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture & the Environment. “OpenTEAM pairs agriculture with open source technology to accelerate soil health right here in Maine and around the globe.”

The more than $10 million public-private collaboration is made possible by a $5 million grant from FFAR, with more than $5 million matching contributions coming from across the network, including a $200,000 grant from The Stonyfield Foundation and $200,000 in in-kind contributions and a grant from Stonyfield Organic.

“Optimizing soil management practices not only improves soil health, but also protects the environment,” said FFAR’s Executive Director Sally Rockey. “At scale, OpenTEAM can improve soil management practices for farmers around the globe and mitigate the effects of climate change.”

“Stonyfield is strongly committed to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions,” said Britt Lundgren, director of organic and sustainable agriculture at Stonyfield Organic Yogurt. “Over half of our emissions come from agriculture, so in order to hit our target we know we need to work with the farms who provide our ingredients and help them reduce their emissions and sequester more carbon. OpenTEAM will enable us to do this, and track farms’ progress so we can be confident we’re hitting our goals.”

“We are inspired by the level of collaboration, leadership and vision our OpenTEAM partners have provided,” said Dorn Cox, PhD, research director, Wolfe’s Neck Center. “Through the power of open technology, we aim to make what was invisible visible and in so doing the unvalued valuable.

Wolfe’s Neck and partners launch open-source soil health platform

A new agriculture software platform co-developed by a Freeport nonprofit is expected to result in critical information about millions of acres of farmland by 2024.

The platform, OpenTEAM, is the first open-source technology system in the world to address soil health and mitigate climate change, according to a news release.

The platform was introduced this week by Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture & the Environment in Freeport, along with founding collaborators Stonyfield Organic, USDA’s LandPKS project and the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research. OpenTEAM stands for open technology ecosystem for agricultural management. The platform will provide farmers and scientists around the world with higher-quality data to improve soil health, according to the release.

Agriculture emissions

The tool is also expected to help mitigate the effects of climate change. Agriculture is the source of as much of 20% of the gases that cause global warming, according to OpenTEAM marketing materials. At scale, it’s expected that OpenTEAM can help farmers improve soil management practices so they reduce emissions and sequester more carbon.

“Optimizing soil management practices not only improves soil health, but also protects the environment,” Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research’s executive director, Sally Rockey, said in the release.

Sharing data

Currently, farmers use an expanding assortment of decision-making software, but the tools often don’t “communicate” with each other. That makes it difficult to transfer, share or use by farmers and scientists or in supply chains.

With OpenTEAM, its developers say, farmers can enter their own data and also access all of the collaborative’s tools.

Those tools include field-level carbon measurement, digital management records, remote sensing, predictive analytics and input and economic management decision support in a connected platform.

Wolfe’s Neck Center will coordinate OpenTEAM from its headquarters. Implementation and demonstration will begin this fall. Field-testing will continue in the 2020 growing season across the U.S. and international hub farm networks.

$10 million collaboration

“At Wolfe’s Neck Center, we are collaborating to create solutions that address climate change through regenerative agriculture,” Dave Herring, Wolfe’s Neck’s executive director, said in the release. “OpenTEAM pairs agriculture with open source technology to accelerate soil health right here in Maine and around the globe.”

The more than $10 million public-private collaboration is made possible by a $5 million grant from Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research, with more than $5 million matching contributions coming from across the network, including a $200,000 grant from the Stonyfield Foundation and $200,000 in in-kind contributions and a grant from Stonyfield Organic.For more information on OpenTEAM or becoming an OpenTEAM partner, contact Dr. Dorn Cox at dcox@wolfesneck.org.