An Extension of the AgroXML for the Sugar Cane Crop Operations Interoperability

Abstract

The sugar cane crop has been growing in the last decade due to the great demand of ethanol in the energetic chain as a cleaner alternative to the traditional petroleum derivates. The intensive utilization of modern agriculture techniques and engineering increased the sugar cane production in 40.8% from 2000 to 2008. The high competitive scenario among sugar cane companies make it even more necessary to have a better data exchange methods to support management decisions with quality and in real time. The entities involved in the sugar cane operations (farmers, sugar mills, transporters, mechanics, etc) need access to information in order to make decisions and manage the resources involved in the operations. The automation of the data collected in the field and large utilization of sensors, mobile devices end other wireless technologies make it necessary to use a standard to assure communication between them. The entities and the devices are geographically distributed and the internet is an excellent alternative to exchange data. The contribution of this work is an extension for the sugar cane operations of a well known XML open standard for data exchange in agriculture called AgroXML. The new extension, called SCAgroXML, considers sugar cane ontology to define specific semantics that describes the characteristics that differ sugar cane operations from the standard operations considered in the AgroXML. The SCAgroXML defines yet a hierarchy of operations and a mechanism to filter the exceeded data generated in the operations life-cycle without losing the AgroXML compatibility. The SCAgroXML will increase the quality of data exchange and decrease the time of decision-making in the management chain of sugar cane crop operations, allowing the interoperability between the entities and devices involved.