G-8 Seeks Apps For Agriculture

The U.S. government launched a new agriculture data community on Monday during a special Group of 8 conference in Washington aimed at using open data to produce better crops and more efficient markets.

The two day G-8 Conference is focused on better sharing of information that can improve agricultural performance internationally, ranging from data about plants’ genetic makeup to information about climate change and the computer code that underlies new farming technology.

The conference is also aimed at spurring entrepreneurs to use open agriculture data to develop Web and mobile applications for farmers and researchers.

Officials hope sharing more agricultural data will have the same effect as opening up weather and Global Positioning System data, which produced billion dollar industries.