The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations started the Agricultural Ontology Service (AOS) Initiative nearly six years ago. The purpose of this initiative is to enhance the availability of semantic standards in the FAO's subject areas, with the final goal to facilitate access to and exchange of vital information and knowledge that is needed for the FAO's mandate in the world.

This forum will present the main achievements and the main issues of the last few years. The aim of the talk is to find more synergies between the FAO's work on semantic standards and agricultural ontologies, and the work that is being done in the the Cornell libraries (e.g., Vivo).