One thing for sure is that we all need food to survive and if you read here often enough then you know
I focus on the use and abuse of data, for profit and when it is used out of context and for profit. Well the same thing we see in healthcare also exists with farming. Sure we want good food and better products and big data lurks over there too with “prescriptive planting”. You can read the entire article at the link at the bottom of the post but here we go again, same thing with data for profit. Look at how DuPont is filing lawsuits against farmers who saved “seeds”. Come on if seeds are there and can be used, plant them and don’t put a 75 year old farmer out of business for goodness sakes.
Look what happened in the UK with the NHS selling medical records to an insurance company. Sure I’m all for technology to help farmers by all means but the group makes some good points as far as their data they contribute being sold to commodities traders and that is a valid concern. Sure it is helping with production and the results have been mixed and we all want healthy food to eat but what's it going to cost us? Are we now paying for intellectual property on the food we eat too to support big corporations? All the planting information gets beamed to big servers.
The farmers also worry about competition amongst themselves too with the data and the same thing we have with housing, renting farm land next. Monsanto and DuPont so far said they have not sold the data and Deere shares the data with consent from the farmers. Farming by the algorithms…and the farmers all worry about the long term affect here with the data…just like we have seen with medical records moving from valuable clinical information as the number one priority to “data selling for profit”…with the old double swing to the pitch on some of it, the old bait and switch. If we want healthy food it looks like we are going to somewhere along line be paying for the intellectual properties of the seeds and the food it creates as well. BD
FTC Tries to Bring Strong Case for Consumer Protections With Use of Data–But Nothing About Creating IT Infrastructure Path to Allow Regulation–Gov Can’t or Won’t Model?
Big agricultural companies say the next revolution on the farm will come from feeding data gathered by tractors and other machinery into computers that tell farmers how to increase their output of crops like corn and soybeans.
Monsanto Co. MON -0.17% , DuPont Co. DD +0.48% and other companies are racing to roll out "prescriptive planting" technology to farmers across the U.S. who know from years of experience that tiny adjustments in planting depth or the distance between crop rows can make a big difference in revenue at harvest time.
Some farmers are leery about the new technology. They worry their data might be sold to commodities traders, wind up in the hands of rival farmers or give more leverage to giant seed companies that are among the most enthusiastic sellers of data-driven planting advice. The companies vow not to misuse the information.
"There's a lot of value to that information," says Brooks Hurst, 46 years old, who works 6,000 acres with his father and brothers near Tarkio, Mo. "I'm afraid, as farmers, we are not going to be the ones reaping the benefit."
Many tractors and combines already are guided by Global Positioning System satellites that plant ever-straighter rows while farmers, freed from steering, monitor progress on iPads and other tablet computers now common in tractor cabs.
In 2012, DuPont hired Agro Protection USA Inc., an intellectual-property-protection firm staffed largely by retired law-enforcement officers, to watch for signs of farmers who are saving second-generation seeds. Saving the seeds violates licensing agreements farmers sign when they buy seeds.
Monsanto has filed lawsuits against nearly 150 U.S. farmers since 1997 for replanting seeds that contain the company's proprietary characteristics. Last year, the company won a U.S. Supreme Court victory in a case against an Indiana farmer who was 75 years old at the time.
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