Tractors, Big Data and Corporate Companies
Hello Bob
Bob is a farmer. Bob is modern, he has drones, robots and a shiny tractor helping him to cultivate his field. More than just helping him, these tools used in industrial agriculture generate data, a lot of data. These data are generally millions of numbers on an Excel table. They can give information about temperature, wind speed, water availability, soil humidity, nutrient content, plant health, etc. This fast-produced, cheap and huge amount of data doesn’t make any sense to Bob. What can he do with them?
Big Data, Bob and friends
The data about plants, climate and financial markets are a great opportunity for Bob to get an up-to-date and locally specific intel about his culture. His data are also compared to a database of neighboring farmers. Thanks to this, he can precisely adjust his field management to lower his cost of production and increase his profit. For example, Bob knows the nutrition needs of his plants on a day to day basis, therefore he can add the right amount of fertilizer at the right time without overusing it. When he has data about the commodity market, Bob can sell his crops at the best time to get the highest profit.
The information created from the data make it easier to make the best decisions, however Bob can’t manage all these data by himself, he needs external help from experts. In the past those experts were his grandfather and the wise old men in the village; today’s experts belong to private companies. These companies have infrastructures to store, exchange and analyze huge amount of data.
The collection and trading of data is a very lucrative activity. Data brokers such as Acxiom or Experian focus on getting data from all over the world, curate them and distribute them. They ensure the traceability, anonymity and quality of the data.
Data analysts come at the end of this chain. They translate data into recommendation ready to be implemented by farmers. Data analysis creates new business opportunities and attract entrepreneurs willing to create consulting agencies to help farmers increase their profit. FarmGuide in India is one of these agri-tech start up, it is “integrating technology such as machine learning and data analytics to create customized information to cater to farm businesses and growers”. It helps Indian smallholder farmers to take the best decisions by giving them information about weather, market opportunities and new crop seeds. This information is sent as a pre-scheduled and prerecorded voice call to the farmer who can take fully informed decisions.
The power asymmetry in Big Data
In the process of getting data, one farmer alone has a negligible role but all together farmers are crucial. They create the raw data which are then monetized by external companies. Ideally, farmers should learn and be trained to use Big Data, however today, most farmers from industrial farms are simple franchisers working under the guidance of a firm such as Monsanto. These farmers may develop a dependency for their partner and become more vulnerable.
The corporate company has access to each farmer’s secrets, for example field quality, plant growth and crop yield… Moreover, the farmer doesn’t know how and where his information is kept or used. Climate corp, a world leader in agricultural big data business, recognized the data ownership of farmers, however it didn’t give any right to them concerning the analytics and information generated from these data. The expertise and the quantity of data available for these companies give them power. Since one farmer alone doesn’t have much influence on these firms, farmers organized themselves in cooperative to negotiate their rights. They are afraid that a third party such as another company or the government would get access to their private information without their knowledge and consent.
Even if farmers have access to new insights about their farm thanks to the Big Data, they expose themselves to an existential threat if the data fall in bad hands. For example, yield data can be used to speculate stocks on the commodity financial market which may decrease incomes and threaten farmers livelihood.
The future needs more than data
The Big Data in agriculture has the potential to completely restructure the economy. More people are aware of the global environmental problem and many want to solve it. A change in consumption habits already occurred. People want a healthy food, fairly and sustainably produced. With the possibility to scan a QR code with a smartphone and know the way a fruit is grown, the consumer will be able to buy environment-friendly products and boycott the companies who have high negative externalities. Nonetheless, this progress, which is enabled by Big Data, shouldn’t risk the farmer’s livelihood. Even if the technology based on Big Data open new exciting opportunities, we need to be careful. Social science and ethics have to catch up with technology to create a global legislation and protect data providers from power abuse. Moreover there is a need to educate farmers about Big Data and train them to safely take advantage of it.
Bye Bob and be safe
Bob creates data. That data has a huge potential. It has the potential to increase his income, to feed and save the world. In order to use this potential, Bob needs good allies: experts who will give him an equal power — all without exploiting him. The question we need to answer is: Where are these allies?
