By Jacob Bunge
Monsanto Co. on Friday said it supported industrywide standards
for managing information collected from farmers' fields, seeking to
tamp down concerns among farmers over who will control the flow of
farm data.
Officials for the St. Louis-based seed company backed a uniform
format for such data and said the company is developing a free,
online storage system for information ranging from crop yields to
planting dates. Monsanto said its view is that farmers own the data
generated by their businesses.
"We want to be clear with the farmer about what we intend to do
with the data," said David Friedberg, who heads Monsanto's
data-services businesses. "We know we need to earn our customers'
trust."
Monsanto's farm-data proposals come as the agricultural industry
grapples with privacy and intellectual-property questions raised by
a raft of new services that use data analysis to inform planting
and farm management.
Seed and chemical companies like Monsanto, DuPont Co. and Dow
Chemical Co. are developing data-mining services that analyze
information collected by farmers and their machinery and provide
recommendations around seeding fields and spraying chemicals, for a
fee. In November Monsanto paid $930 million to acquire the Climate
Corp., which Mr. Friedberg founded, to bolster the seed company's
data offerings.
The prospect of sharing intimate details of their operations
with the companies has raised concerns with some farmers who are
worried that the companies could tap the information for their own
purposes or sell it to other entities, like commodity traders.
Monsanto officials said they were working with other companies and
farmers to develop industrywide practices to address those
concerns.
Mr. Friedberg, speaking on a conference call with reporters,
said Monsanto wouldn't sell farmers' data to third parties, and
would secure permission before using the information to develop new
services. Agreeing an industrywide format for the data would help
transport it more easily among various software systems, if farmers
choose to do so, he said.
Monsanto aims to build a free, online data storehouse where
farmers can upload such information, which Mr. Friedberg said
should help farmers become more comfortable with sharing their data
online. The company won't access that data without farmers' OK, he
said.
The American Farm Bureau Federation, which has raised concerns
over the past year over how farmers' data could be used and shared
by companies, supported Monsanto's proposals.
"We are encouraged that agribusinesses are taking our clear
policy position into consideration," Farm Bureau officials said in
a statement.
A spokeswoman for DuPont said that the company abides by
data-privacy laws and agreed "in principle" with Monsanto's
proposals, but urged farmers "to always read and understand the
terms and conditions of any services they sign up for as each
company maintains its own policies and provisions."
Write to Jacob Bunge at jacob.bunge@wsj.com
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