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Gore: What Is Agriculture Data and How Valuable Is It?

Mining business insights, ag tech developers must understand the nature of their customers and ag data, ag tech blogger Bob Gore writes.

What is agriculture data? How valuable is ag data? Are niche hackers chasing ag data? (I’m sort of answering the middle question.)

Ag tech developers: Knowing the answers to these questions will help you understand your rapidly evolving business.

First: What is ag data? This is more crucial and complex than you might imagine. Is it intellectual property, a form with which you are familiar? Yes. Is it real property? Yes. Is it personal property? You bet.

For specifics, we consult Indianapolis attorney and ag blogger Todd Janzen, who recently wrote:

“As a form of property, ag data is a mix of real, personal and intellectual property. Yield data, for example, is information inextricably linked to the land, like real property. Yield data is also highly portable, like personal property. But it also contains valuable information, like intellectual property. “Those characteristics make ag data unique from other forms of property. Farmers can own real, personal and intellectual property, but ag data is a hybrid of all three. Can we say the farmer owns his or her data? Yes, if the farmer owns the field, if the farmer owns the equipment that creates the data, and if the farmer generates the data. “But when others are involved in creating that ag data form of property,” Janzen says, “ownership becomes a more difficult question. If you hear about a court or legislative body addressing this issue, please let me know. I can’t wait to see how the issue is perceived.”
So ag data is unique. Not surprisingly, considering ag, it’s a hybrid and land-based. Ownership remains unresolved … though farmers would strongly dispute that notion.

Thus we get to questions two and three: How valuable is ag data? Are niche hackers chasing ag data? The answers are: Very  food is essential and yield = profits. And, yes hackers are an on-farm problem.

Mining the business insights, ag tech developers must understand the nature of their customers and ag data. You must follow, and perhaps contribute to, the final determination of whose and what sort of data it is.

Further, farmers now and in the near future are evaluating ag tech and the applications and integration thereof. (“Farmers” are in the dictionary under “cautious adopters who must see a clear profit in your product.”)

Combating hackers is not on their radar (mostly), but if you’re smart, you’ll compare hackers to the guys who are stealing tractor trailers full of nuts, field equipment and other expensive stuff.

You know what farmers need to know about data protection: Cybersecurity precautions must be installed and updated, employee access must be monitored, remote logins (this is big for farmers, they just don’t know it yet) should have two-factor authentication over a VPN and train employees on social media threats.

This latter is essential and difficult. There are training opportunities, here, folks, and valued consulting too!

Understand agriculture from the ground up.

Bob Gore writes the AgTech column for Techwire. Follow him on Twitter at @robertjgore.