I’m Andres Ferreyra. I was born in Córdoba, Argentina; I live in Murray, Kentucky with my wife, our two boys, a dog and a cat. Along the way I picked up:

• An Electric & Electronic Engineer degree from the National University of Córdoba (UNCOR), after which I designed digital hardware & wrote firmware & applications software for weather satellite image reception & processing equipment and other industrial applications for about a decade.
• A MS in Agrometeorology at UNCOR, where I picked up a love for crop physiology, and modeling of water stress and soil-plant-atmosphere interactions.
• A PhD in Agricultural and Biological Engineering (with a minor in Computer Science) at the University of Florida, under the guidance of Dr. Jim Jones, an extraordinary man, engineer, leader and role model.
• A serious interest in cooking (especially Japanese and cast iron) and foodways.

I work for Ag Connections, a farm management software company founded in 1998 by Rick Murdock and Pete Clark, two visionaries who knew they could help growers become better professionals and help transform agriculture into something more akin to medicine or engineering. Syngenta, our largest customer since day 1, bought into that vision figuratively and literally: in Octoer 2015 Ag Connections became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Syngenta.

In June of 2004 I became a full-time Ag Connections employee and moved to Murray, KY. I’ve had the opportunity to work on multiple projects since then, such as:

• Traceability in a fish-processing plant
• Leading a team that implemented automated design of center pivot irrigation systems. This included writing algorithms to solve (with user-friendly speed) various nonlinear spatial combinatorial optimization problems associated with the optimal positioning, sizing and configuration of irrigation systems.
• Leading projects for handheld field operations data capture (Hand.db and AgC Scout CRM)
• Leading a project for voice-based field operations record-keeping (Ag Connections’ Farm By Phone product.)
• Leading integration projects with platforms such as Deere’s GreenStar 2 and GreenStar 3 controllers.

In late 2010 Ag Connections joined AgGateway, a consortium of 240+ companies from the ag industry dedicated to implementation of data standards to promote eBusiness in agriculture a.k.a. “eAgriculture”. I’ve had the fortune of representing my employer and being very involved in various parts of AgGateway since then, but most notably its Precision Ag Council (and the SPADE and PAIL projects it has chartered), the Standards & Guidelines Committee, and most recently, ADAPT. My mandate from work has been simple: “Help these guys be successful!”

This blog will likely discuss various aspects of my work with AgGateway; it’s amazing how some of the problems we deal with seem to be universal across different industries! But more on that later.

DISCLAIMER: I like to cook. A lot. There will be recipes…