Food Solutions New England (FSNE) is a regional food systems learning-action network dedicated to advancing a sustainable New England food system. The FSNE network is organized around four interrelated activities:
A New England Food Vision, a bold vision that calls for our region to build the capacity to produce up to 70% of food that is produced in an environmentally and socially sustainable manner, that promotes health and is accessible by all New Englanders by 2060; New England state food planning initiatives; annual New England food summits and topical workshops; and related analysis, communication and visualization.
The UNH Sustainability Institute serves as the backbone organization for FSNE. Since its inception in 2006, FSNE has advanced its mission by linking a common agenda, shared measurement, continuous communication, and synergestic activities.
Great to see some interest and enthusiasm around data standards! (usually a hard sell in my outreach work...)
Louis, NEFKE is in the very early stages of development, still (and hopefully always) very open to the participation and input of others like you. We're looking at the standards mentioned as a guide, but have a lot of work to do toward implementing them in a practical way.
The first thing we'll likely do is look at how we can better leverage and link existing organizational and network data via the Farm to Institution New England and NEFOOD web sites when we migrate them to Drupal. We'll likely extend the VIVO ontology for that, possibly using the Drupal-based ontology editor Neologism Valeria Pesce used for AgriVIVO. This will be supported and articulated through group value network mapping exercises that will enable us to identify the critical pathways and relationships between transactional food value chain players, and the wider support networks. I can see this something like this possibly happening at one of the upcoming Farm Hack gatherings, combining trained value network mapping facilitators with farmers, value chain intermediaries, support people (including info intermediaries like me) and programmers.
In terms of data sharing and staging, we'll be looking at ways Drupal can be used to shared linked data using tagging/metadata, e.g. via RDFa. I'm hoping we can secure additional funding to do that in a more expansive way at some point. I'm having lunch with the former President of the Data Commons Cooperative in a couple weeks to explore that particular model.