Following the development and testing period in Estonia, UC1c has completed the Single Member State testing phase of its IACS data sharing API and is moving forward into Multi Member State testing phase. During Multi Member State testing the prototype will be adapted and tested with local IACS data in Italy, by UC1c testing partner AGEA. Multi Member State testing is expected to be completed in May 2021.
In order to measure farmer performance, i.e. to evaluate farmers’ impact on environment and climate and economical sustainability, enhanced interoperability is required between IACS (the information system used by EU Paying Agencies) and information systems used by farmers. Current IACS data alone is not sufficient and the identified data gaps can be filled with additional data originating from Farm Management Information System (FMIS) type of applications where farmers record information about their agricultural activities. UC1c has developed a prototype solution, microservice for exchanging data between IACS and FMIS type of software. In technical terms, microservice is a REST API with two endpoints enabling to share IACS data with FMIS and FMIS data with IACS, data exchange protocol is based on eCROP standard. Source code is available in Gitlab, currently the access is limited to NIVA project partners only but it will be made publicly available at further stage of project.
During Single Member State testing phase the prototype was evaluated by Estonian start-up company eAgronom providing FMIS software. Their feedback has been valuable input and we expect further collaboration in improving the UC1c prototype. eAgronom has provided a positive feedback to the first version of prototype and also some recommendatons for further improvements which will be taken into account.
We are excited to start the Multi Member State testing phase and collaboration with AGEA in testing and evaluating the prototype. During this period the activities in Estonia will not be stopped, we are working on elaborating the farmer performance indicators which could be calculated based on combining IACS and FMIS data. Also, further improvements of the prototype are expected, based on feedback and results of testing.
An overview of UC1c results and planned testing in Italy is also given in presentation made at NIVA project virtual meeting on 23rd Nov 2020.