The Linux Foundation has launched an open source infrastructure project for agriculture. AgStack Foundation will build and sustain the global data infrastructure for food and agriculture to help scale digital transformation and address climate change, rural engagement and food and water security

Founding members include IBM, HPE, Agralogics, Call for Code, Centricity Global, Digital Green, Farm Foundation, farmOS, Mixing Bowl & Better Food Ventures, NIAB, OpenTeam, Our Sci, Produce Marketing Association, Purdue University / OATS & Agricultural Informatics Lab, the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC-ANR) and University of California Santa Barbara SmartFarm Project.

AgStack consists of an open repository to create and publish models, free and easy access to public data, inter-operable frameworks for cross-project use and topic-specific extensions and toolboxes. It will build on existing technologies such as agriculture standards (AgGateway, UN-FAO, CAFA, USDA and NASA-AR); public data (Landsat, Sentinel, NOAA and Soilgrids; models (UC-ANR IPM), and open source projects like Hyperledger, Kubernetes, Open Horizon, Postgres, Django and more.

“AgStack’s goal of creating a shared community infrastructure for agricultural datasets, models, frameworks, and tools fills a much-needed gap in the current agtech software landscape. Making these freely available to other software projects allows them to focus on their unique value and build upon the work of others. We in the farmOS community are eager to leverage these shared resources in the open source record keeping tools we are building together,” said Michael Stenta, founder and lead developer, farmOS.

“The global Agriculture ecosystem desperately needs a digital makeover. There is too much loss of productivity and innovation due to the absence of re-usable tools and data. I’m excited to lead this community of leaders, contributors and members – from across sectors and countries – to help build this common and re-usable resource – AgStack – that will help every stakeholder in global agriculture with free and open digital tools and data,” said Sumer Johal, Executive Director of AgStack.

“We’re pleased to provide the forum for AgStack to be built and to grow,” said Mike Dolan, general manager and senior vice president of projects at the Linux Foundation. “It’s clear that by using open source software to standardise the digital infrastructure for agriculture, that AgStack can reduce cost, accelerate integration and enable innovation. It’s amazing to see industries like agriculture use open source principles to innovate.”

“Through Call for Code and IBM’s tech-for-good programs, we’ve seen amazing grassroots innovation created by developers who build solutions to address local farming issues that affect them personally,” said Daniel Krook, IBM CTO for Call for Code. “As thriving, sustainable open source projects hosted at the Linux Foundation, applications like Agrolly and Liquid Prep have access to a strong ecosystem of partners and will be able to accelerate their impact through a shared framework of open machine learning models, data sets, libraries, message formats, and APIs such as those provided by AgStack.”

“The explosion of agri-tech innovations from large companies to startups to governments to non-profits represents a game changer for farmers in both the Global South and North. At the same time, it’s critical that we build digital infrastructure that ensures that the impact of these changes enables the aspirations of those most marginalised and builds their resilience, particularly in the midst of climate change. We’re excited about joining hands with AgStack with videos produced by & for farmers and FarmStack, a secure data sharing protocol, that fosters community and trust and puts farmers back in the centre of our food & agricultural system,” said Rikin Gandhi, Co-founder and Executive Director, Digital Green.

“Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are critical to food and agriculture transformation, and will require new computational models and massive data sets to create working technology solutions from seed to shelf. The AI Institute for Next Generation Food Systems is excited to partner with the AgStack open source community to make our work globally available to accelerate the transformation,” said Ilias Tagkopoulos, Professor, Computer Science at UC Davis and Director, AI Institute of Next Generation Food Systems.