Australian Agrifood Data Exchange Phase 2: Experiment 2 - Biosecurity

Summary

The Australian Agrifood Data Exchange is a multi-stakeholder project that aims to address the significant issue for agricultural industries and government, where although the use of data and analytics is becoming more widespread, the sectors are held back by the lack of a consolidated data exchange that combines multiple data sets from multiple data sources in real time. This program looked to address challenges for industry while also collaborating with the Research, Industry, Commercial and Government sectors to leverage solutions, tools and techniques being developed across Agriculture Research, reducing duplication and providing access to additional whole of agriculture funds.

This project looked to strengthen biosecurity in the viticulture sector by integrating standardised, accurate traceability data.

Objectives

The strengthening of biosecurity in viticulture experiment involved testing the viability and feasibility of a data exchange to manage an incursion of Phylloxera.
The objectives of the experiment were defined as follows:

1. Test the viability and feasibility of the use case in the context of a data exchange

2. Demonstrate a design approach and solution for a data exchange (including permissions and data standards)

This experiment explored how an interconnected data exchange is capable of working successfully and easily to better manage an incursion of Phylloxera. This experiment highlighted some of the considerations relevant to the adoption of a technical solution.

Key findings

Some considerations to an industry wide adoption of a data exchange include:

- Gaining an in-depth understanding of the attitudes and concerns of the people involved behind the processes is key to aid individual participation in data sharing.

- A distributed technical architecture that fosters trust through clear data ownership, permissioning and custodianship is key to promoting participation in the data exchange

- A solution where the same dataset can be used for multiple purposes has significant advantages

Benefits to industry

The benefits from this multi-phase program of work seeks to create a data highway for obtaining data for decision making, and improving the functionality and analytical potential of data, ultimately leading to valuable time saving realisations not only within the red meat industry but across the Australian agrifood sector.
So far, the Australian Agrifood Data Exchange has highlighted some practical ways the program will seek to benefit the agricultural industry.

This includes:

- Centralising data (e.g., certifications) to ensure compliance with industry requirements can be proven and fast checked in an easy manner
- Merging data sources to enable the source of any contamination or the presence of pests to be rapidly identified

- Enabling the benchmarking of data to be shared with any required parties in the industry for comparison and decision making

- Providing data to illustrate the journey of the produce from the producer to the consumer, including details from each point in the supply chain (e.g., the product’s certifications, origins, or exposure to chemicals).

MLA action

MLA/ ISC will continue to act as a lead role in the Australian Agrifood Data Exchange program into phase 3.

Future research

Phase 3 of the program will be to run experiments on each of the four agreed use cases as well as determine the operating model and governance structure for the exchange.