DTL has become a partner in the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) initiative. This rapidly growing initiative advocates for open data at governments, NGOs and the private sector worldwide. Last month, Barend Mons (scientific lead at DTL Data) presented the FAIR principles to 750 GODAN Summit participants in New York. In addition, the FAIR principles are an important building block of a GODAN discussion paper for a vision on ‘A Data Ecosystem for Agriculture and Food’.
Ben Schaap, GODAN Secretariat Research Lead, explains: “GODAN supports the proactive sharing of open data to make information about agriculture and nutrition available, accessible and usable to deal with the urgent challenge of ensuring world food security. It is a rapidly growing group, with over 380 partners from national governments, non-governmental, international and private sector organisations that have committed to a joint Statement of Purpose. GODAN invites the DTL partners to join and help advocate for policies, capacity building and research that will facilitate relevant sharing of open data to feed the world.“
Richard Finkers, a plant breeding researcher at Wageningen UR and member of the DTL scientific team: “As a GODAN partner, DTL will be invited to participate in events in the Netherlands and worldwide. GODAN does not only promote the exchange of ideas, opportunities, and issues among its partners, but also provides the opportunity to start working groups and organise GODAN activities such as Hackathons and Bring Your Own Data workshops (BYODs). Currently, DTL and GODAN are exploring possibilities to organise a BYOD event on an agriculture and nutrition topic.”