Growing Returns

Selected tag(s): data privacy

Why privacy is an essential piece of agriculture’s big-data revolution

By Clara Qin / Bio / Published: February 9, 2017

Your ag data has the possibility of being hacked Data science in farm management is one of the biggest trends to hit both agriculture and Silicon Valley in recent years, with an explosion of technologies emerging to help farmers optimize everything from seeding to irrigation to fertilizer application.

As ag tech products grow more sophisticated, so too has the innovation trend evolved. What began as a slew of single-purpose tools has now evolved to include apps that integrate different types of information to give farmers a “dashboard” view of their land. And it includes new apps that can help multiple farmers pool their data to analyze a crop’s performance across a range of growing conditions, or to benchmark their input costs against one another.

The agriculture sector stands to gain insight from all this data. Farmers need metrics to help them figure out how to increase yields sustainably while improving soil health and protecting natural resources for future generations.

But they have valid concerns about sharing data. Read More »

Posted in Uncategorized / Also tagged ag tech, big data, data science, data sharing, farmers, Partnerships, privacy, security, sustainable agriculture, technology | Comments are closed

Who will protect farmers’ privacy in the big data boom?

By Robert Parkhurst / Bio / Twitter profile / Published: November 10, 2015

When it comes to technology and agriculture, policymakers are wrestling with the role government should play in protecting the intellectual property rights and privacy of farmers.

This discussion came to a head recently when the House Agricultural Committee held a hearing to examine the impacts of “big data” on the entire agricultural life cycle. With farmers and companies collecting and storing data on everything from fertilizer rate to yield to soil conditions, there are important concerns to consider: Is the data secure? Who owns analyzed data? Will companies sell the data to others or make new products based on sensitive information?

Ahead of this hearing I wrote a blog post detailing the hurdles farmers must overcome to fully integrate data as a way to increase the abundance and sustainability of modern food production. The main challenges I highlighted were:

Privacy: Farmers need to know they won’t be willingly revealing trade secrets when deciding to share data about their farming techniques.
Format: Not all data collection platforms use the same language, so a uniform way to understand what is being collected must be created.
Complexity: Many growers are intimidated by the vast quantity of data they collect, so we have to help them understand what matters and what doesn’t.

Posted in Carbon Market, Supply Chain / Also tagged agriculture, Apple, big data, carbon market, farms, House Agricultural Committee, House Committee on Agriculture, precision ag, public private collaboration, soil, sustainable agriculture, technology | Comments are closed