CAPIGI Webinar | Digital rights in farming data sharing
Click on the name of the sepaker to view the presentation.
The innovations in spatial data acquisition and in data processing are dazzling. And agriculture is benefitting a lot from those innovations. Compared to 10 years ago, we can do so much more for the same money: now we have cheaper, better, faster and varied data acquisition and we can process it with models, algorithms, AI and deep learning. What also helps is the fact that GIS is democratized with free and open tools, and maps become part of the daily life of many people through their mobile phones.
The interesting point is that the Earth’ coordinate x,y,z (for the purists, we should also include time t) is a key identifier in data sharing and data integration. With these coordinates, all kinds of data sources are connected, from satellite to mobile phone. In agriculture, the data from the planting machine can thus be integrated with data from the spraying machine – even from different brands. And it can be overlayed with soil data, satellite data, weather data etc.
This implies, that as soon as a farm or a farmer can be linked to those coordinates (e.g. through cadastre information, or simply by tagging) spatial data can become personalised.
Most farmers consider data about their land, their crops and their activity as theirs, and as such build up a resistance to lose control on who is seeing, using, manipulating (or deleting) these data.
The difficulty arises when data are collected by others: by satellites, by machines (operated by farmers though) or sensors or by suppliers, contractors or buyers of the farm produce. Or by governments. Who controls data sovereignty? And how can privacy be infringed.
Another difficulty lies within the data sharing, when data is shared and used for other purposes then it was originally collected. Or if data is used and shared beyond the original purpose. Is the Code of Conduct from the farmers organisations and industry covering all of this?