Enabling Agricultural Traceability through Data Interoperability

The phrase 'canonical data model' singular implies a one sized fits all approach. In exploring this in the international community what we've found is that it is important that you have an agreed profile for specific governed industry / location boundaries that are at the level of granularity of the governed entity or sector. This 'profile' provides a canonical definition for the supply chain actor for specific activities, but may mean several 'canonical models' for a single farming business that engages in different activities. If there were a single canonical model for the Australian agriculture sector, it would need to be as narrow in scope as possible to ensure that the varied needs of complex farming systems can be addressed by profiles that extend that model to the specific commodity and business needs.

I'd add something along the lines of low cost and openness. It is important that there aren't commercial barriers to adoption.

It is important to add a sense of market coverage - ie if the select term doesn't cover something like > 90% of the ag market than it prob doesn't fit at the broad agriculture sector definition.

There wasn't an option for both... but we should really start with what is defined but maintain the flexibility to make our own determination based on the value that is able to be delivered to the market.

This toolset could be the reference resource for the starting agriculture wide data model, but importantly would provide industry associations, RDCs, large industry players, analysts, AgTech firms and growers all the ability to extend the interoperability data model to meet the specific needs of their business and the innovative spirit of Australians.

In supply chains it is typically relatively straightforward for a customer to have a pretty good understanding of the location of their suppliers and businesses can often map locations together to meet their needs. Often communities are well positioned to provide guidance on this as well. In a decentralised ecosystem, you can often build collaborative 'maps' and 'profiles' that describe how the different identification schemes overlap and meet. This doesn't meet some of the biosecurity and safety issues that government are concerned about. Standardising location identification is one of those things that probably benefits biosecurity use cases most and the benefits would flow to industry.

Guidance on how to take standard models and extending them to meet the needs of innovative businesses is something that is necessary.

It doesn't really speak to the variability of the ag sector and the need for the ability to extend to meet the needs of business and specific commodities.