I would first like to explain that this blog is my opinion. I wouldn’t be working where I am today if my opinion and the opinion of my employer didn’t align. There may be perceptions that you may not agree with and that is fine. Please feel free to email me and we can engage in cordial conversation for the better of our industry. I am writing this both as a farmer and as someone who works in the ag industry.

What types of data are you collecting on your farm?

On our farm we collect a lot of data- and I’m sure you do too, even if you don’t think of it that way. The obvious data we collect is precision ag data off monitors, we have Ag Leader, Trimble, and Precision Planting equipment.

But we collect much more than that though manual spray records, manual planting records, and even grain cart field scales. This is all farm data. Our financial records are collected and stored on Quick Books, including what we’ve paid for specific inputs or information on crop marketing is value data to our farm. Even personal information is data; your name, address, social security, tax id number, phone numbers, credit card information, even family information. I bring these up because you probably have already thought of how important this data and are asking yourself as you read this “who has gotten their hands on my information?”

Is your data valuable?

My short answer is yes. My long answer is that this value is on a relative scale. Some data may actually be worthless unless it’s joined with other data we collect on our farm later. Some data may be not at all valuable to us or our farm, but it could be valuable to a business or organization we work with.

An example? How valuable is data about my tractor planting speed? Probably not farm-changing. But what if it is paired with yield data at the end of the year? Then it becomes much more valuable. So even in the growing season our data’s value can slide on a continuum.

What about the volume and name of inputs you purchase, is that data valuable to your farm, the entity and competing entities? The amount of seed, the varieties, the traits are all data points that are actually recorded with your name on them and must be shared up the chain of ownership of the specific trait you are using. Final thought here is if that final company also has my yield data, how much more valuable has that data become to my farm or to that entity? I think you know the answer, for that entity this may be considered the 10 on that continuum.

What’s it worth in dollars and cents and where are you getting those numbers from?

Personally, I have yet to have someone ask to pay for my data with no strings attached. I have been offered some “interesting” deals though. One of these deals allowed farmers to purchase hardware at a discounted price, but to do so, they have to share their data with a cloud storage software. It seemed harmless and even beneficial to the farmer because of the hardware discount- you could probably say that you were being paid for your data. I was skeptical, I asked questions and was disappointed- it turned out that the farmers were getting very little compared to what the company was getting out of the data. Since then, I’ve heard many farmers tell me they wish they would have never done the program and tried to stop but broke their agreement if they didn’t share data to the cloud.

This is not paying for data. This was a “creative” way for a company to get their hands on a farmer’s data. I think there is a dollar value to the data we collect, but it can change daily and at the end of the day, we sell grain, so unless I use my data to sell grain more profitably, I can’t put a value on it.

When does your data become valuable?

Our data is more valuable later in the season after it’s paired with yield data, but even then, what if we never analyze the data. Is it still valuable? If we never were able to use the data to sell grain more profitably, did it have any data.

I like to say if we keep doing the same thing every year, then there is no reason to collect data. But what if you could collect data, analyze it, and then supercharge it with even more data than we could collect on our farm? It’s possible. We can do it by combining our data with data from other farmers. By combining all the data together, or aggregating it, without any personally identifiable information connected to it, we can see what data other farmers are collecting.

Don’t get me wrong, this can be very scary, and you may be worried because I work for a company that does just this. So stay with me, this is scary because many companies who do this take their new data sets, analyze them, and never shown them to the farmer. So the farmers create it, but the entity that has the means, money, and knowledge to aggregate the information can keep it, and all the new value it’s created, to itself. This. Is. scary. Now on the other hand if a platform was created for farmers to collect, share, and analyze all the data you collect but then do nothing with it other than returning it to the farmers, how much more valuable would your data be to you then?

Who owns your data? Are there multiple owners?

We need to be loud when we ask who owns the data that we collect on our farms. You should own all your data that is personally identifiable to you and your farm. But there may actually be multiple owners of the data as soon as you collect- you need to be aware of how every company you work with handles data ownership.

Your John Deere tractor, for example, tells you they also own your data (right or wrong, it’s documented, you have signed off on it, and they can do with it as they please, maybe even sell it to a third party). There are also less apparent owners of the data, like does any of our data actually belong to our land owner? I have seen great arguments for both ways and most of the time I think some data is owned by the farmer and some is shared.

No one person can aggregate their data with another without their being a change in ownership. What the intentions and what is done with the aggregated data afterwards is the only thing we should care about- if you trust the owner of the aggregated data to use if for the betterment of your farm, and you still own your private, identifiable data, then everyone is good. If you don’t trust the entity to serve your farm better, then you should be hesitant in granting access to your data. I for one trust the company I work with, first and foremost because the aggregated data is only shared back to participating farmers and never shared or sold to the outside world. I don’t know anyone else that provides the aggregated data back to farmers like this. It allows me, as a farmer, to analyze my farm and the group data to make better decisions for next year and in turn I know this is going to help our farm sell more grain at more profit.

Who do you trust your data with? What do they do with the data? What happens if you don’t want to work with them anymore? If you knowingly hand off your to a third party, what is done with the data and who benefits from the third party control?

Building trust in agriculture is one of the biggest challenges, and rightfully so. There are a lot of companies making money off of farmers like us, even when markets are bad and we’re not making any. However, there are some in agriculture that have gained our trust. Our lenders, our accountants, our crop consultants, and our seed dealers come to mind. But I’ve found that most of the data we collect stays on our computers because the people we trusted the most could always be influenced to use the information in a way that doesn’t benefit our farm.

Agriculture does not have as much scrutiny, legally, as other industries, but every company has a Terms of Service that you must sign, and this is the easiest way to check the policy of a company you work with. They are full of legalese, but they must outline what they can and cannot do with data you submit. Look for things like never selling your data.

You should thoroughly vet the intentions of any company you do business with. You might not know me, but there are plenty of farmers in your area that have trusted a company to do what they say they’ll do. You should ask them about their experience with Farmers Business Network. I believe wholeheartedly in what this company is doing and as I have told every farmer I have spoken to, if FBN would ever stray from this trust, our personal farm would be the first to leave. The network is actually where the trust in our company lies, if we do not have a trusting network we don’t have an operating business model that allows you to transact with manufacturers directly, through FBN Direct.

Thank you for the time in reading this blog, if you made it this far without getting bored or critical of my literary skills then I owe you lunch. Feel free to email me at my work email nicolas@farmersbusinessnetwork.com and if you would like to chat on the phone feel free to shoot me your number.