Agricultural operations

These terms describe the physical facilities, machines, vessels and irrigation works used in agriculture; the people and organizations that provide agricultural services; producer organizations; and agricultural input products with their declared composition. Agricultural concepts and properties use the agri/ namespace. Terms whose meaning is not specific to agriculture, such as ProductComponent and service_provider, keep root URIs. The terms are at draft maturity. Definitions are PublicSchema design choices informed by the sources below; they do not claim equivalence with, or conformance to, any national register.

Concepts and evidence

Concept	Evidence	Meaning and boundary
AgriculturalFacility	FAO Global Soil Laboratory Network; e-NAM FAQ, "How will e-NAM operate?"	A physical site, building or installation used for agricultural or aquaculture production or a related activity. It keeps its identity when its operator, holding or registration changes. facility_function states what happens there.
AgriculturalLaboratory	FAO Global Soil Laboratory Network, network registration and proficiency disclaimer	A facility where agricultural materials are analyzed or tested. Network membership does not show accreditation or proficiency.
AgriculturalMachine	FARMS Farm Machinery Solutions, hiring and sale of machinery	An identifiable machine or implement used for agricultural work. It keeps its identity when its owner, operator or hiring service changes. Serial numbers are identifiers.
FishingVessel	FAO Port State Measures Agreement, Art. 1(j); Global Record Unique Vessel Identifier	A vessel used, equipped or intended for fishing or fishing-related activities. Its IMO number or other unique vessel identifier stays with it across changes of name, flag and owner. Registration and authorization to fish are separate records.
AgriculturalServiceRole	Register work involving pesticides; Public Register of Seeds Merchants, Processors and Packers; FARMS	A dated relationship in which a person, organization or group offers or performs stated agricultural services. It does not show qualification, registration or permission.
ProducerOrganization	Regulation (EU) No 1308/2013, Art. 152; Producer and interbranch organisations	An organization set up and controlled by agricultural producers to pursue shared aims in one or more sectors. Legal recognition is a separate Registration or Authorization.
AgriculturalInputProduct	EU Pesticides Database; Regulation (EU) 2019/1009; Starting an animal feed business; FAOTERM pesticide	A product specification or marketed formulation used as an agricultural input. It is not a package, shipment, batch or product authorization. input_product_category states its regulatory category.
ProductComponent	EU Pesticides Database; HL7 FHIR R5 Ingredient	A declared constituent of a product with its role and, optionally, its amount on a stated basis. It describes composition, not use or dosage.
IrrigationScheme	AQUASTAT irrigation and drainage methodology, equipped area and water-source typology	A defined area in which water is controlled for irrigation, with the works that supply it. The equipped area differs from the area actually irrigated in a season, and from permission to use water.

Regulatory sources explain distinctions; they are not legal advice or executable eligibility rules. The WOAH reference is the 2024 edition of the Terrestrial Animal Health Code, used as conceptual evidence.

Kinds of facility, service and product are codes

A facility's kind, a service role's services and an input product's category are values of closed vocabularies, not subclasses. None of these kinds adds properties of its own, and a single record often needs several of them: a livestock market is both a livestock establishment and a market, and a seed business may process and pack seed.

Property	Vocabulary	Values
facility_function	AgriculturalFacilityFunction	apiary, aquaculture_establishment, livestock_establishment, plant_nursery, storage, processing, market, other
agricultural_service	AgriculturalServiceType	input_supply, pesticide_application, seed_processing, seed_packing, seed_marketing, machinery_hire, advisory, animal_health_service, post_harvest, other
input_product_category	AgriculturalInputCategory	feed, fertilising_product, pesticide, other

A laboratory is an AgriculturalLaboratory, because it carries laboratory_capability. fertilising_product follows the umbrella category of Regulation (EU) 2019/1009, which includes fertilisers, liming materials, soil improvers, growing media, inhibitors and plant biostimulants. pesticide covers plant protection products and biocidal products, including plant growth regulators, defoliants and desiccants. National categories and finer regulatory classes, such as the EU product function categories, belong in a profile or in a separate coded property.

Operators, providers and members

Facilities, machines, vessels and irrigation schemes do not carry an operator property. An operator, owner or other responsible party is an AssetPartyRole whose subject_uri is the asset and whose asset_role_type states the responsibility, with start_date and end_date. This keeps a change of operator from changing the asset, and lets one business operate many sites. See facility roles.

AgriculturalServiceRole identifies its provider by URI through service_provider, because the provider can be a person, an organization or a group. A URI does not prove the kind of the target; a profile resolves it. service_equipment names a machine offered or used without implying ownership. supplied_product refers to a product specification by URI, so a seed lot or a veterinary medicinal product keeps its own classification. service_area describes geography, not a particular holding.

Membership of a producer organization is an InstitutionalRole: role_actor identifies the member, role_organization the producer organization and institutional_role_type the member role, from a published scheme. The member may be a person, a group or an organization. Membership does not imply employment or ownership.

Composition and quantities

component_substance, component_role and component_basis are coded values. Role distinguishes an active substance from a safener, synergist, co-formulant or declared nutrient. The amount and the basis are read together: 10 % as a mass fraction of the whole product differs from 10 % expressed as the oxide, and 250 g/L is a mass per volume. Quantities use UCUM units with unit_scheme ucum: % for percentages, g/L for concentrations, m for lengths and har for hectares.

vessel_length_overall is the length overall. Registered length and length between perpendiculars are different measurements and are not recorded in this property.

Related records

The shared Certification records a scoped conformity assertion by a certifying body; it is not a permission to operate. WaterUseAuthorization records allowed quantities, each stated as a rate such as cubic metres per day, not actual abstraction. Registrations and authorizations refer to facilities, products and operators as their subjects; product identity is not duplicated in them.

Examples and counterexamples

The JSON files in examples/agriculture-operations/ are synthetic. They include facilities recorded by function, dated operator roles for a facility and an irrigation scheme, service roles for machinery hire, input supply, pesticide application and seed packing, feed and pesticide compositions with explicit bases, and producer-organization membership held by a person and by an organization.

Counterexamples: a laboratory directory entry is not accreditation; a suspended authorization does not erase a product; an organic operation certificate does not certify every product the business sells; an empty apiary remains a site; moving bee colonies does not move the site; hectares equipped for irrigation cannot stand in for cubic metres abstracted. Schema validation cannot determine legal permission or whether a URI targets the intended real-world object.

Scope

National profiles can tighten requiredness, code schemes and date ordering. Laboratory samples and results, irrigation network topology, dosing instructions, inspection workflows and transaction ledgers describe process or observation models and are outside these terms.