The main screen of the agriculture and food big data cloud service. [Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs]
The main screen of the agriculture and food big data cloud service. [Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs]

South Korea is opening its agriculture and food big data to the public for the first time, giving businesses and citizens direct access to government-held datasets on crop prices, pests and livestock diseases.

The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs announced Monday that it will launch a private cloud-based agriculture and food big data cloud service on Wednesday.

Until now, the ministry's big data had been accessible mainly to civil servants through an internal analytics platform, leaving businesses and the general public with limited means to use the information directly. The ministry has rebuilt the data-access environment on a private cloud infrastructure to allow outside users to tap into it.

The new service will publish information on all 166 datasets the ministry holds, while making 35 of the most in-demand datasets immediately available. The open datasets include data on agricultural and food prices, pest outbreaks and livestock diseases.

The 35 datasets will be provided via application programming interface, or API — a method that lets external programs automatically pull data by connecting systems directly. Users can download the data they need and integrate it directly into their own services or applications.

Metadata for all 166 datasets will also be published, covering the content, format, source and update frequency of each dataset. Users can check whether the ministry holds the data they need and submit a request for access. The ministry will then decide whether to provide it after consultations.

After the service launches, the ministry plans to identify additional high-demand datasets and expand the range of open data. User feedback and improvement suggestions gathered during operation will also be incorporated into the service.

"This service is the first step in opening up agriculture and food big data — which the government has largely kept for its own use — to the public and to businesses," said Lee Si-hye, the ministry's director general for agro-industry innovation policy. "We will actively identify the data that citizens and companies need, reflect user feedback, and develop the service into one that is more convenient and useful."


adastra@heraldcorp.com