Just nine of 30 agribusiness companies have followed through on a pledge to implement the Farm Bureau’s 2014 “Core Principles” for transparency in the collection of farmers’ data.

The initiative, began by the American Farm Bureau Federation four years ago and supported by these very same companies, led to the creation of an online tool – the Ag Data Transparency Evaluator – to help farmers make better decisions on the tech companies that offer them data services.

In recent years, state-of-the-art technology has started to help farmers collect data in their fields, including projected yield and rain totals, to make business decisions such as when to work their fields and how much fertilizer and pesticides to apply.

However, when data is collected in a field, that information is uploaded to a cloud-based system hosted by an agriculture company, which also has access to this information.

In 2014, the American Farm Bureau Federation raised concerns about how companies collecting farmer data were using the information.

In response, the farm bureau launched its “Core Principles” – guidelines for agribusiness companies that collect farmers’ data to ensure the data is used transparently.

Read the full article on agriculture data use transparency by Johnathan Hettinger at The New Food Economy