FAO’s Shiny New Agricultural Data & Information Sharing Tool

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has recently released a new resource that will make its agricultural development strategy a whole lot easier. The Agricultural Development Assistance Mapping (ADAM) tool is a platform that gathers information from diverse databases about agricultural development needs, objectives, in-country activities, and funding modalities, and aggregates

From SXSW to the White House, Food Data a Trending Topic

It is clear that there is a real need, and a real opportunity, to use data to tell the stories of the food movement and to support advancements in agriculture, advocacy, science and health. Data is also a necessary tool for lawmakers to produce smarter policy that speaks to the needs of the people

Calling Food & Tech Innovators to the Health Datapalooza

This June 5, the best and brightest of the food tech community are being invited to showcase your work at the third annual Health Data Palooza. Hosted by The Health Health Data Initiative, the event brings together over 1,000 health data stakeholders and showcases how health data can create services, tools and applications to support more informed decision-making by patients, health care systems, and community officials

Ramen Data: Mouth to Anus

Processed food like ramen noodles and gummy bears are bad for you. Now, for the first time ever, you can see how for yourself.

Artist and provacateur Stefani Bardin’s newest project M2A™:The Fantastic Voyage offers a graphic look at how the gastrointestinal tract (GI) processes a meal of Top Ramen versus a meal of hand made noodles

Publicly Releasing Data Would Improve Food Safety, Says Government Report

The National Research Council released a report today stating that “publicly posting enforcement and testing data…on the Internet could have substantial benefits, including the potential to favorably impact public health.”

Could Startups Fill USDA Data Holes?

Last month, 14 survey reports were cut or reduced to save the USDA Statistical Research Unit $11 Million annually. At the same time, over the past few years there has been an explosion of websites, software and apps developed to help farmers manage their farms, market and distribute their products and trace products from farm to fork. In light of the cuts, I ask:
Could the aggregate data produced through these platforms be utilized to supplant any of these survey reports

National Agricultural Library Data Now Open, and Linked

The USDA’s National Agricultural Library (NAL) announced that its Agricultural Thesaurus is now available as Linked Open Data, making possible connections with data from other agricultural databases.

Justin Massa on Hacking the Food System: Democratizing Data

This spirit of democratizing data is at the core of some of the most exciting things happening in the food tech space. From making healthier decisions to discovering deals to discovering dishes and recipes to assessing food safety, a slew of exciting startups are working to develop food data into engaging consumer applications – hacking the food system

Danielle Gould on Hacking the Food System: From Proprietary to Open Design

Our food system is not broken- it is poorly designed

FOOD 2.0: Sharing & Making Use of Restaurant, Menu, & Farm Data

Panelists from Seamless Web, AllMenus.com, Ordr.in, Clean Plates & Plovgh discussed their current projects using restaurant, menu, ingredient, food source, and nutritional data during the FOOD 2.0 Internet Week series. The also discussed barriers they face in collecting and sharing data in hopes of building a standard interchange called “Clean Format.”

Commodity Cropism: The Data You Don’t Have About Your Food

Media artist and Eyebeam Resident Stefani Bardin is outraged by the way that nutritional information is currently obscured and delivered, which causes detrimental effects to our health and the environmental. Her latest project, Commodity Cropism, a multi-channel video installation, uses stylized commercials to “expose veiled information” about these darlings of industrial agriculture: corn, soy, and sugar. The project also seeks to arm the public with data left out by “loosely monitored food production and labeling systems.” The installation includes three videos (below) each chock-ful with fascinating statistics about the three monocrops

[Video] What Questions Would You Like To See Answered With Mint.com’s Data?

Mint.com gathers large amounts of data about it’s users purchasing habits.
The following video highlights the correlation between particular times of year and the average consumers spend on groceries, coffee shops, and fast food.

iTools: Building a System; Part 3- Connecting to the Data

In yesterday’s installment, I spoke of how we decided to store our data, what freeing the data means for us and for others, and how we found a simpler data solution that worked for the software developer (me) and the layman (John and many other people out there). Today, I want to talk about how we got this data to an interface that is useable for people to analyze, gather, and use

iTools: Building a System; Part 2 – The Data Source

Yesterday, in part 1, I outlined how quickly the world of technology is changing. John set the bar by accessing open source code from Google and said: “Look, the map is up. Now what are we going to do with it?” It was now time for some programming tricks. How were we going to store

iTools: Building A System; Part 1 – The Dilemma

In this five part series, Bob Wall breaks down how created the interactive mapping system for the food sovereignty, urban agriculture zoning, and food policy council maps. In part 1, he discusses the dilemma that all those working with data face when they look to share it.