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The Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program, funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is composed of more than 140 projects supported by over 3 billion dollars in funding. Our involvement with this work is tied to the Alliance to Catalyze Transition Incentives through Open Networks (ACTION) for Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) project. More specifically, members of the Element 84 team are acting as geospatial subject matter experts in order to support development of a financial marketplace supporting climate-smart agricultural practices, the Public Land Asset Library, and National Calibration Data Sets. 

How is this work connected to USDA’s Climate-Smart Agriculture program?

All projects under the USDA Climate-Smart Agriculture program share several primary objectives relating to climate-smart commodities. According to the USDA website, “This effort will expand markets for America’s climate-smart commodities, leverage the greenhouse gas benefits of climate-smart commodity production, and provide direct, meaningful benefits to production agriculture, including for small and underserved producers.” 

Illustration of a barn on a field. There are several captions. Next to an illustration of money over plants, it reads "Provide direct-to-producer incentives to implement climate-smart practices." On the other side of the money image it reads, "Build demand and develop markets." Next to a blue swuare icon with pegs coming out of it the caption reads, " Engage farmers with tools and technology." and "Develop interconnected and accessible technological infrastructure." Finally, next to an image of a document it reads "Deploy modeling and measuring of climate benefits through existing TAP networks."
Image courtesy of Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture & the Environment

Our participation in this program is tied to work conducted by our partners at The Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment (WNC). Heavily committed to open technology and data for our agricultural system, WNC is involved with a few related organizations that shape their involvement in this work: OpenTEAM (a group facilitated by WNC) and Gathering for Open Agricultural Technology (or GOAT, a forum for agricultural technologists and users to convene and collaborate on the development of open tools for our food system). 

Our work on this important subject matter is directly made possible by the award granted to WNC as part of the USDA Climate-Smart Commodities program. ACTION seeks to facilitate change in the agriculture sector through three primary avenues: 

  1. Providing resources and training to Technical Service Providers engaging with Climate-Smart practices 
  2. Creating incentives for producers transitioning to Climate-Smart Agriculture
  3. Facilitating a marketplace for climate-smart commodities

Our involvement with ACTION

As mentioned earlier, our team is serving as geospatial subject matter experts for this WNC initiative. Element 84 is working alongside other talented organizations to further the important work as defined by WNC, and our goals specifically center around facilitating and participating in a series of collab-a-thons. Much like hackathons set forward to further a specific set of goals, our collab-a-thons are designed to aid in development for designated project goals: 

  1. Storing records of field boundaries and associated activities for the Public Land Asset Library 
  2. Developing the Environmental Claims Clearing House, a credible marketplace that supports financial incentives for practices that reap identified environmental benefits 
  3. Creating a reference dataset to implement the minimum standard for describing the data structure, resolution, and more for the USDA’s Farm Service Agency’s (FSA) standard. 

Work to date

Our goal in contributing to this sub-award is to ensure that all specifications and concept notes produced either make appropriate use of existing tooling, standards, and/or specifications; or contribute to the development of emergent tooling and/or standards. 

Although this work is still underway, we are excited to share our current progress. Most recently, Ian Cooke is involved with efforts to effectively share grazing data through participating in the Grazing Lands Carbon Data Initiative (GLCDI), convened by Terra Genesis. Through sharing data in a simple and efficient way, this data will be able to be used in the development of systems and models throughout the rest of this process. 

We are also excited to contribute to crucial conversations around this work in both the OpenTEAM In-Depth learning series and at Field Boundaries for Agriculture (FiBoA) project meetings. E84’s own Matthew Hanson presented on Cloud-Native Geo and Community Standards at the OpenTEAM learning series to outline the basics of STAC, COGs, OGC, and how Element 84 uses these standards with cloud infrastructure to support geospatial data access and management. Relatedly, Ian Cooke has been participating in FiBoA project meeting discussions to define a community specification that supports interoperable exchange of agricultural field information.

Continued involvement with ACTION and Climate-Smart Agriculture

This work is still in progress, and we look forward to continuing to update this page as further developments are made. If you are interested in learning more about this project or related work we are doing related to climate or open technology, we’d love to hear from you! You can find our team on our contact us page to learn more.

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