Rethinking Ag Data Ownership

Abstract

While much has been written on the future state of big data in agriculture in Australia and elsewhere, the majority of the commentary and literature focuses on the benefits that digital agriculture can bring to productivity of agricultural industries – very little has focused on the potential legal issues and barriers to adoption. These barriers include the uncertainty around the ownership of agricultural data, and the consequential lack of producer confidence in the security and the broader benefits of big data. With a lack of certainty, the lack of confidence becomes a barrier to the adoption of technology itself. This paper argues that the focus on ag data ownership is rather unhelpful and in some cases, unnecessary and distracting.