ISPA Account
Business Meeting Minutes - On-Farm Data Sharing (OFDS) Community at ICPA
26 June 2018, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
The meeting started at 6:35 pm with 11 people in attendance. After introductions, a discussion occurred about changing the focus of the OFDS Community from sharing of field-scale trial data collected on production farms to methods, protocols and analysis of on-farm experimentation.
The rationale for the change provided by Nicolas Tremblay and Tom Morris was that the proposed new Consortium for On-Farm Experimentation with leadership by Simon Cook would benefit from having a scientific home in ISPA, and because some of the objectives of the OFDS group have been shifted to an OFDS Working Group in the Research Data Alliance organization.
The discussion about changing the focus OFDS Community explored the possible benefits and requirements of establishing an On-Farm Experimentation Community. Myrtille Lacoste, who is a colleague of Simon Cook, led the discussion and the possible benefits and detriments discussed are shown below:
-
The new community could be a complement to the Consortium for On-Farm Experimentation.
-
Technical topics like design, analytical and implementation specifics of on-farm experiments could be part of the Community, while methodological approaches, rationales and benefits of on-farm experimentation could be overarching topic areas for the Consortium.
-
Major benefits include making use of the Community’s existing website and network, notably scientific expertise
-
The leaders of the new Community would need to be careful that the objectives of the Consortium for On-Farm Experimentation and the Community do not overlap and create duplication of efforts.
John Fulton made a suggestion that an important goal for the new Community could be to publish a compendium of methods for on-farm experimentation on the ISPA community web site within 2-3 years. Roger Sylvester-Bradley highlighted the need to connect with specific expertise (e.g. soil analytics with large-scale experiments). Myrtille suggested the use of message boards to that end. Nicolas confirmed this would be possible. Fiona Evans and Rodrigo Trevisan suggested to make scripts available and possibly database examples, and Nicolas Tremblay the possibility to build a Wiki or “How to” to articulate ideas and speedup the inclusion of newcomers. Myrtille Lacoste suggested the Community could gather 1-pager descriptions of OFE projects as a mean to connect with the Consortium mandate (to connect worldwide farmer-centric research initiatives and report on this). Collectively, the suggestions amount to the following possible targets to work toward until the next Community meeting, all achievable using the existing website:
- starting the construction of an “OFE Wiki” including definitions, projects 1-pager descriptions, scripts, expertise contacts and software recommendations, exercises with (training / non real) databases, repository of protocols and existing farmer/extension guides;
- developing a message board for Community members to post specific needs, connect people swiftly and conveniently (demand/offer), and provide a platform for rapid feedback on emerging directions.
Myrtille Lacoste from Curtin University, Australia and Daniel Kindred from ADAS, UK volunteered to become the Presiding Leader and Vice Leader for the new On-Farm Experimentation Community.
Tom Morris and Nicolas Tremblay will help Myrtille and Daniel to make the transition from the OFDS Community to the On-Farm Experimentation Community.
Meeting adjourned at 7:15 pm.
Attendance list.
Name Organization Email
Myrtille Lacoste Curtin University myrtille.lacoste@curtin.edu.au
Fiona Evans Murdoch University fiona.evans@murdoch.edu.au
Gary Hatfield South Dakota University gary.hatfield@sdstate.edu
Rodrigo Trevisan USP-Brazil/UIUC rodrigo@smart.agr.br
Ajay Sharda Kansas State University asharda@ksu.edu
Dave Huggins USDA-ARS, Pullman, Washington david.huggins@ars.usda.gov
Roger Sylvester-Bradley ADAS, UK roger.sylvester-bradley@adas.co.uk
John Fulton Ohio State University fulton.20@osu.edu
Daniel Kindred ADAS, UK daniel.kindred@adas.co.uk
Nicolas Tremblay Agriculture Agri-Food Canada nicolas.tremblay@agr.gc.ca
Tom Morris Univ of Connecticut thomas.morris@uconn.edu