Farmers claim data rights

Companies coming under fire for ‘‘circling the wagon’’ and taking ownership of farm data are being told to back off by farmers.

Farmers are letting companies know that they own and control data which is expected to become more valuable as more sensors go into farms.

The ring-fencing of farming data is among challenges farmers face as they realise they need to make better use of agri-technology to make farms more profitable.

In the United States major agricompanies have been pulled up for gathering data and selling services without compensation and the first farmers are now being paid for their agri-data.

Data ownership was raised at a smart farm and innovation seminar at the ASB Innovation Zone during the Central District Field Days at Feilding. The panel led by ASB agri-capital head Kevin Cooney included Massey University Professor Ian Yule, ManawatuRangitikei Federated Farmers president James Stewart, My Farm Investments’ Andrew Watters, Abacus Bio’s Jude Sise and Spark Ventures’ Patrick Verryt.

Cooney said farming innovation was more than synthetic meat or vertical farming and was an extension of established ‘‘whiz-bang’’ technology and cloud based tools, albeit fragmented across the country.

He asked the speakers who should have ownership of farm data and if this created problems bundling it to make better systems for farmers.

Verryt said data ownership was one of the biggest challenges and the golden rule was that data must remain with farmers.

‘‘Sovereignty is with the farmer and he who places the sensor owns the data. Sovereignty for data is critical.’’

Yule said companies had wanted to ‘‘circle the wagons’’ to control data.

His feeling was that these days were gone as farmers wanted to own the data, but some companies would struggle with that concept and universities were at times struggling to access data to do research. Stewart said a new generation of farmers was coming on farms and willing to work with data.

Farmers would need technology to attract and retain them. They did not want data overload, but some apps such as the Fonterra app and his bank app were extremely useful, he said.

Stewart said easy access to data was needed as one of the big bugbears for farmers was having to enter data twice and ‘‘system A not talking to system B’’.

Farmers were also wary of technology becoming a regulatory tool after Overseer had been used for estimating nutrient losses.

Verryt said he knew of two farms which were 13 kilometres apart and virtually the same size yet one of them made 46 per cent less than the other. The gap could be closed by leveraging existing assets as farming had some ‘‘smokingly’’ smart people and data had to go from one person to another, he said.

Sise said an integrated data sharing platform was needed otherwise farmers would get bogged down with data.