At its virtual annual conference this past week, AgGateway honored individuals who have made outstanding contributions in advancing the industry’s transition to digital agriculture. These digital solutions help companies reduce errors and increase efficiency; achieve in-teroperability in hardware and software systems to turn data into value; and leverage global resources and business relationships needed to enhance productivity, traceability and sus-tainability.
Ann Vande Lune, Agronomy Administrator at Key Cooperative, received AgGateway’s Ron Storms Leadership Award, the organization’s top honor. The award recognizes repeated, out-standing efforts by an AgGateway volunteer member in promoting collaboration among Ag-Gateway teams and advancing initiatives in digital agriculture. In presenting the award, for-mer Ron Storms recipient Eric Hoefing, also of Key Cooperative, said the judges praised Vande Lune’s dedication to the AgGateway mission and ability to involve others in the im-portant work at hand.
“AgGateway teams need input from both the business and technical sides of the industry, and Ann brings a valuable business perspective to the table,” Hoefing said, adding that this year Vande Lune hasn’t been slowed down by the many challenges of 2020, providing lead-ership in seed and ag retail initiatives, and in general leadership at AgGateway.
AgGateway also presented its annual AgGateway in Action Awards at the conference. Recipi-ents are chosen by the leadership within the three regions of the organization - North Ameri-ca, Europe and Latin America - and recognize individuals who have moved connectivity ef-forts forward in the current year. The 2020 winners include Scott Meredith of ACS in North America, Patricia Perez-Fernandez of Lexagri-Homologa in Europe, and Adriano Becker of CNH in Latin America.
In addition, President & CEO Wendy Smith gave the 2020 President’s Award to Scott Nieman, Expert Enterprise Architect at Land O’ Lakes. Smith said Nieman stands out this year for several reasons, particularly for his efforts on the Product Catalog Working Group and the Traceability Working Groups.
“Some of the work AgGateway is doing today is truly charting new territory, and Scott is helping us with that vision,” Smith said.
AgGateway’s Annual Conference drew business and IT professionals from across the indus-try. AgGateway extends its thanks to the many generous conference sponsors, including Ti-tanium: Bayer, Proagrica; Platinum: BASF; Silver: Corteva, EFC Systems, RiceTec, Rosen’s Inc., SSI and Syngenta; and other sponsors: AgCIO Roundtable, ARMtech, Co-Alliance, DXC, Effingham Equity, GROWMARK, Key Cooperative, and Wilbur-Ellis.
More on AgGateway activities can be found at www.AgGateway.org.
