Recent articles on the moves to harness big data in agriculture have highlighted concerns about who owns that data, how it might be used and who should benefit from that usage. Industry expert Andrew Cooke believes these tensions can be managed, allowing the industry to look at the potential benefits.

OPINION: The headline was confronting - big companies were being told to "Back off: farmers own their farm data" (March 23). Like other similar articles this one drew attention to the importance of the information economy to farming: the capture of real world activity and the application of advanced analytics to provide insight about farming systems.

We see the tensions of big companies gathering data in our everyday lives: banks, credit card companies, and loyalty schemes capture information about our spending habits and organisations use it to target offers. Search engines and web browsers track our online interests and provide relevant advertisements. Our smartphones track our every move.

We're somewhat insulated from the impact of this data collection in our personal lives. Competition and regulations – particularly consumer privacy laws – control what companies can do with data about us, and most of what we see results from anonymised use of information.

In business, the rules are somewhat less clear cut. Privacy protections apply to personally identifiable data, but the bulk of business and farm information use is controlled by the terms of business to business contracts. If a farmer wishes to control the data they have collected on farm, they need to ensure that their service providers have appropriate terms and shared expectations about what can and cannot be done with that data.

READ MORE:

Back off big companies: farmers own their farm data

The situation may be more subtle when data is collected by companies during their normal course of business. Unless a farmer has agreed otherwise, it's likely that the GPS co-ordinates collected by their fertiliser spreader and the milk solids or carcass records collected by processors are under the control of those organisations. Of course, they'll share that data with the farmer, but a common understanding about the use of that data is even more important.

Two Primary Growth Partnerships (PGP) programmes between industry and the Ministry for Primary Industries have recognised both the challenges of the rapidly evolving information space and the opportunities for making effective use of farm information. I've been privileged to work with The Transforming the Dairy Value Chain and Red Meat Profit Partnership PGP programmes, farmers, and some 60 companies and organisations to help create the Farm Data Code of Practice, farm data standards, and DataLinker.

The Farm Data Code of Practice provides an accreditation process that helps farmers and organisations to achieve a more transparent understanding of how data will be collected and used. The code is administered by Federated Farmers, Beef+Lamb NZ, DairyNZ, the Dairy Companies Association, Meat Industry Association, Veterinary Association, and the Maori Trustee. Accreditation by an independent review panel provides assurance for farmers that organisations have clear terms that help farmers understand how their data may be used, and appropriate policies and controls around data access. Greenlea Premier Meats and the Gallagher Apps On Farm joint venture are the two most recently accredited organisations. Full details are at www.farmdatacode.org.nz.

The industry projects don't stop with accreditation. DataLinker is a technology framework that helps companies to share data effectively, directed by their farmers or subscribers. Farmers are frustrated with having to repeat data across multiple forms or extract data manually from one system and re-enter it into another, and DataLinker addresses this problem. It ensures that the recipients of data have agreed to standard data access rules, and lets farmers explicitly grant or deny permission for data to flow.

B+LNZ Genetics has recently implemented the DataLinker framework in its business. General manager Graham Alder says "Currently we need to support multiple integration end points when exchanging data with different parties. B+LNZ Genetics are looking forward to being able to exchange data with different parties via a single industry standard endpoint. DataLinker provides us a good framework in which to make data exchange agreements, without being dependent on DataLinker (or any other intermediary) for the data exchange."

Importantly for both farmers and industry players, the DataLinker framework is not another database system that must be populated and maintained. It is a set of specifications that use the latest internet standards, so companies adopting the framework are responsible for their own decisions about the way it is implemented internally. A small annual membership fee contributes to keeping the specifications up-to-date as technology evolves.

Farmers are right to be talking about data, who owns it and how it will impact on the future, not only in their industry but in their everyday lives.

It's called Big Data for a reason – there are big challenges and opportunities ahead. Whether farmers own data as part of their business operation and sell it to others or share it through a project like DataLinker, they stand to benefit from that collection, sharing and analysis.

That future is not yet written but people can rest assured there are organisations working hard to make sure that the farmers, the industry and wider economy own the benefits.

This article was originally sourced from Stuff NZ here.