With a single smartphone app, you can now get a pretty accurate forecast of the weather anywhere in the world. That is largely thanks to a decision by science agencies, a decade ago, to put online their satellite data and make it available for free.
"For hundreds of years, NOAA (the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) has been collecting that data. But when it was made open and available, that's when the apps started appearing," said Jaime Adams, an international affairs adviser for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Now science, computer and agricultural experts hope to achieve something similar for farming and food data.