Concerns about who owns the significant amount of data, now being gathered about farming production practices, have been raised by a senior Victorian Farmers Federation (VFF) official.
VFF horticulture group vice president Emma Germano told the second AgriVictoria summit, in Melbourne, data worth millions of dollars was being generated, through new technology.
“Whilst we don’t want to stop ourselves from using this data, there a lot of areas where farmers are being taken advantage of, and they are not being valued for what they offer the economy and society,” Ms Germano said.
“It would be a shame if data was another thing that was taken from farmers, without them being remunerated, or rewarded correctly.
“It’s a wealth of knowledge farmers have carried around in their head, now they are starting to put it into an app, and it has to be owned by someone and it has to be paid for.”
Mr Germano was part of a panel, Smarter Farming, Investing in Your Future.
Panel chair, University of New England precision agriculture research group (UNE-PARG) data could be seen as a fourth commodity.
He said the production of data had joined food, fibre and carbon, as a fourth commodity, alongside food, fibre and carbon
“We are being confronted with an enormous amount of opportunities, around technology and information.”
Ms Germano said she had looked into one farm management app, but had decided against installing it, as she was concerned about how the data would go and were it would be stored.
“There is a lot of sensitive information around varieties and intellectual property, and putting it into your farming app
“I don’t want to be putting only half of it in there, because I am trying to protect the expertise we have in the business, as its not effective because I would not be using it properly.”
She said the answer went beyond legislation. “It’s around education to the farmer and thinking about what data they are giving out and the potential for where it can be used,” Ms Germano said.
“Yes, there should be legislation and agreements signed that the farmer maintains the ownership of that data, and it can’t be used unless there is some kind of negotiation that takes place
“It is a very difficult thing to police, as well, because you don’t know when it is being used, or who is using it or downloading it, or uploading.
“But it’s a wealth of knowledge farmers have carried around in their head, now they are starting to put it into an app, and it has to be owned by someone and it has to be paid for.”
Legal expert McCullough Robertson partner Alex Hutchens said data was “really the lifeblood” of many industries, as they sought to understand their strengths and weaknesses.
“It’s absolutely an issue and something to be aware of – it’s very valuable and people are always thinking of new and inventive ways to analyse data,” Mr Hutchens said.
“The reason, perhaps, for concern – or the issue to be thinking about -, is ownership is not necessarily the same in every case.
“It depends on what it’s about and who has generated it. If you create something using a software package, it may be terms of use of that package everything you create or put into the platform is owned by the software provider.”
He said it often came down to a contractual question, or point of interpretation, as some data could be protected by intellectual property rights.
“It’s something to be really careful of, when looking at buying software solutions and systems, it comes down to the terms of use.”
Mr Hutchens said farmers should be aware of inadvertently signing over the rights to their data.
“Be aware and read everything before you sign it, make it clear the data you put into a system, or generate in someone elses system is owned by you, so the only way people get to use it with your permission or consent.”
University of Melbourne senior lecturer in veterinary sciences Dr Stuart Barber has developed four dimensional technology, to help his students.
Dr Barber has made extensive use of data to produce eleven high-resolution, panoramic four-dimensional (4D) virtual farms, across Australasia.
The fourth dimension of time was used to demonstrate changes over four seasons that included time series data on rainfall at each location.
“There are a lot of opportunities around intellectual property (IP) and agriculture and certainly some instances where producers should retain their IP,” Dr Barber said.
“Equally there are instances where the sharing of IP allows a greater outcome for all, such as sharing genetic resource information to make faster and more accurate progress towards particular objectives.”
He said producers should take steps, ideally with professional advice, to recognised the best use of the data.
“The biggest failure at this stage is a lack of use of the data in which case there is very little or no value in it and often substantial costs,” Dr Barber said.
