Online ag platform connects farmers, advisers and research
© Tim Scrivener A new online agricultural platform which aims to connect farmers, advisers and industry research to share and discuss reliable agricultural information is soon to be fully available to users.
Known as the Farm Performance Enhancement Platform (Farm PEP), the knowledge exchange tool is being co-designed with a number of industry partners to enable industry stakeholders to share and access relevant knowledge.
Farm PEP was born of the Yield Enhancement Network (YEN) and is open to all. It takes farm-centred research developed in the YENs and uses tools to help groups address key agricultural issues.
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Roger Sylvester-Bradley, head of crop performance at crop consultant Adas and the YEN, says a platform has been produced to share and connect trustworthy information and knowledge for farmers.
“The farming forum has enabled tens of thousands of people to share knowledge, but there is no quality control,” he says. “In this platform, we have built the concept of quality control into it – rather like the way Wikipedia works but specifically for agriculture.”
Farm PEP is still under development and feedback from the site is welcome.
How does it work?
Farm PEP connects people, organisations, projects and knowledge across agriculture. It is built on a framework of topics and allows users to browse or search by clicking on icons.
Anyone can join and login to like, follow and connect, or add content with text, pictures and videos. Trusted stewards then help distil useful summaries of knowledge for each topic, summarised by four main pillars:
- Shared Knowledge
- Shared data
- Shared ideas
- Co-ordinated tests.
Using Farm PEP
- Find distilled knowledge about a topic and connect to relevant projects, resources, people and organisations
- Tell people about what you are doing with your organisation, project, product or network
- Connect to relevant people, projects, organisations, reports and products
- Question what is known
- Help distil information into knowledge and messages of what works
- Develop ideas into proposals and projects by forming groups
- Collaborate as a project team or group
- Share what you know and what works
- Engage by liking, following, sharing or reporting content
