Open agriculture data on the European Data Portal
Publication Date/Time
2018-09-26T09:00:00+00:00
Re-using open agriculture data supports food quality, organic farming
and reduces food waste
INSIGHTS INTO A HIGH-PRIORITISED AREA 

Not all Open Data has the same potential for re-use. The European Data
Portal provides thirteen data categories of which one is agriculture.
The ever-increasing climate change has an enormous impact on flora and
fauna. This results in constantly increasing heat waves during heavy
rainfall at the same time. These extreme weather conditions are very
difficult for the agricultural industry to handle. To pay more
attention to this topic, datasets and use cases from the agricultural
sector from the European Data Portal exemplify the value of re-using
Open Data to address current and future challenges in agriculture.

IMPACT OF ORGANIC FARMING

The European Data Portal offers 18,095 datasets related to
agriculture. The topics are ranging from supply balance statistics for
oats, barley and wheat [/data/en/dataset/cereals-supply-balance] in
Ireland, to the production of fish eggs for human consumption from
aquaculture
[/data/en/dataset/http-ec-europa-eu-eurostat-web-products-datasets-fish_aq2b]
as well as milk and milk product statistics
[/data/en/dataset/http-data-gov-be-dataset-statbelpub-96e6da4cc8b77048fcb5ed40b90c55f64093f79a]
from Belgium. In addition to food-related issues, a lot of topics are
dealing with thematic fields around wood, for instance by providing
information about sawmills
[/data/en/dataset?q=sawmills&sort=metadata_modified+desc&ext_geo_input=&ext_bbox=&ext_prev_extent=-154.68749999999997%2C-80.17871349622822%2C154.68749999999997%2C80.17871349622822]
or wood production
[/data/en/dataset?q=wood+production&sort=metadata_modified+desc&ext_geo_input=&ext_bbox=&ext_prev_extent=-154.68749999999997%2C-80.17871349622822%2C154.68749999999997%2C80.17871349622822]
or land use
[/data/en/dataset?q=land+use&country=de&sort=metadata_modified+desc&ext_geo_input=&ext_bbox=&ext_prev_extent=-154.68749999999997%2C-80.17871349622822%2C154.68749999999997%2C80.17871349622822],
for example with soil data from agricultural land
[/data/en/dataset/soil-data-from-agricultural-land-under-differing-crop-and-management-regimes-2006-2010-relu-eff]
which has a huge impact in organic agriculture. Consisting of soil
data for 64 field sites, the latter dataset provides data from
measuring aggregate stability, organic matter content, soil shear
strength and fuel consumption. Another resource of impactful Open Data
is the SCALE project
[http://eidc.ceh.ac.uk/metadata/5b33e1e1-88d1-4a41-8a0c-2e71c2e379ee/zip_export]
that addresses the clustering of bio-farms and the variation of
environmental and cultural impacts of organic farming, driven by
neighborhood effects at different levels.

OPEN DATA USES CASES IN AGRICULTURE

Eleven examples of Open Data use cases on the European Data Portal
focus on agriculture. One example is the FruitWatcher application
[/sites/default/files/use-cases/use_case_spain_-_fruitwatcher.pdf],
established in Spain, enabling users to monitor fruit transport
conditions. Another use case, the application and platform Saving Food
2.0
[/sites/default/files/use-cases/use_case_hungary_-_saving_food_2.0.pdf],
provides an innovative tool for managing food in order to avoid food
waste. This application works by creating an online network community
to have access to useful information about available surplus food to
empower the users to become part of this sustainable food waste
solution.

To gain more information about environment data, explore the European
Data Portal. [/data/en/group/agriculture-fisheries-forestry-and-food]

 
