From March 16 – 18, 2026 the AEF North American Plugfest was held in Milwaukee, WI, USA. The 3-day event took place in coordination with the AEM. A great opportunity to chat with AEF members and guests and explain to them the goals of the Plugfest and the benefits offered by AEF and ISOBUS.

AEF was joined by a delegation of 6 representatives from AGCO, PAMI, Agriculture Manufacturers of Canada (AMC), and Red River College representing the Canadian agriculture industry to discuss interoperability in Canada.

Once a year, the AEF Steering Committee, Team Leaders and associated deputies hold their meetings in North America. The week before the NA March Plugfest, AEM hosted the AEF in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA from March 11 till 13, 2026.

The Agricultural Industry Electronics Foundation (AEF), was recognized by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) with a prestigious AE50 award for its groundbreaking Vision Zero safety initiative. 

Over the week from January 19 - 23, the AEF was introduced to the agricultural community in Manitoba, Canada. Carl Havixbeck, PAMI, Eric Hawley, AGCO and Glenn Friesen, Digital Agriculture Policy Lead organised this agricultural technology tour throughout the week to unite leaders from manufacturing, tech, academia, and government in advancing agricultural interoperability and digital farming.

This article is the first in a series describing the AEF’s aim to improve interoperability with AgIN and explaining its collaboration with CEADS – the ‘Common European Agricultural Data Space’. It was written by Okan Turkes, Deputy Project Lead at AgIN. He is involved in the CEADS projects as part of AgIN. The main objective of CEADS is to develop a comprehensive system that connects data space initiatives across Europe.

During the week of AEF March Plugfest many activities surrounded the work being done towards the High-Speed ISOBUS (HSI) development and goals for HSI 1.0 to be available for OEMs in 2028. The HSI Discovery Station saw teams from several member companies testing video streaming and CAN tunneling via the 1000BASE-T1 Type B, a fully duplex gigabit single pair Ethernet system.

Since 2020, Bradly Nielsen has led the AEF security team with outstanding dedication and expertise. During this time, he has taken on the challenging task of consolidating the constantly growing security requirements whilst coordinating the ISO 24882 cybersecurity standard. Brad has tackled this challenge with remarkable accuracy and clear priorities.

The AEF Security (SEC) project team welcomes Dave Bailey as its new Team Leader, following the recent transition in leadership.

Leadership Change in Project Team: Medium Voltage

Since January 2026, the AEF has been accepting Start-Ups as new members, responding to the market's demand for such membership.

These companies have recently joined the AEF.

Save the Date – AEF European Plugfest 2026, September 14 – 18, Bologna, Italy

AEF Tech Talk, AEF Project Lectures, ASABE AIM, AEF Plugfest