Craig Simmons, Chief Technical Advisor at Anthesis Group, reflects on agricultural data collection tools and the world of big data.

At the Cool Farm Alliance annual conference held in the beautiful surroundings of New College, University of Oxford, I presented several sessions focusing on the tools that agricultural buyers and suppliers can use to measure, manage and report on the sustainability of their farming practices. Though the main topic was the Cool Farm Tool, the online version of which was built for the Cool Farm Alliance by Anthesis, the discussions quickly turned to other farm management tools and the world of big data. Like so much of the sustainability world, everything is interconnected, or shortly will be.

If we want to make things easier for agricultural producers to measure the environmental impact of their activities, whilst adding value, then common-sense dictates that we must integrate into their existing ways of working and generate new, valuable insights. This means ‘plug and play’ compatibility with their existing IT and software systems and seamless, two-way, data exchange allowing individual producers to both share their results and learn from the experiences of others.

The so-called ‘data cloud’ that is created by this mass of farmer-generated information presents some considerable technical challenges but, just as importantly, also raises some management issues. Though ‘the cloud’ may seem reassuringly ephemeral, the reality is that data is very tangible; it has practical and commercial value. Information, as they say, is power.

When we, as individuals, sign up to the latest smartphone app we largely sign away the rights to any data that our use of the app generates. For example, look at the advertising/privacy policy on your mobile device. It’s likely that you will have unwittingly agreed to disclose your device information, location, search terms, account information, app use and more besides.

Sharing personal data is one thing – in a sense you only have yourself to blame if things go wrong – but sharing business data is another. At the most basic level, the data may not even be yours to share!

It is an emerging area of concern. At one extreme are organizations that believe in ‘open data’ – that see value in maximizing data sharing and minimizing the barriers to accessing this information. At the other extreme are organizations who are warehousing data; either offering ever more sophisticated forms of data protection or finding ingenious ways of generating value from the accumulated private ‘cloud’.

GODAN, the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition, whom I had the pleasure of speaking alongside at the Cool Farm Alliance conference, is firmly in the first camp [1]. However, it recognizes the challenges that open data presents and backs a form of selective disclosure which offers degrees of ‘openness’ based on a data typology first framed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web. In this way, it is hoped that any organization can find a level of data disclosure that they are comfortable with. GODAN's message seems to be resonating. They are a rapidly growing organization with close to 500 partners.

It undoubtedly benefits everyone if information is properly managed. As both Chris Anderson and Stewart Brand have argued, ‘information wants to be free’ [2,3]. Like the entropy that affects the physical world, there is also a tendency for data to become more open; archived data is released as copyright expires, data is released when it is seen as no longer current, there are intentional or unintentional data leaks, and pirated data propagates on the web. Whether wanted or unwanted, much information will eventually find its way into the public domain.

We are still some way off the sort of data nirvana being promoted by GODAN but the direction of travel is certain. For those of us developing sustainability applications at scale we need to factor in clear data standards from the outset.

Having a cool tool is great – but cool data is better.

To discuss your data management processes and tools, please get in touch by emailing craig.simmons@anthesisgroup.com, or alternatively, use our fill out form below.

^{[1] See GODAN’s compelling case for open data in agriculture and nutrition here http://www.godan.info/sites/default/files/old/2015/04/ODI-GODAN-paper-27-05-20152.pdf}

^{[2] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Free-Future-Radical-Chris-Anderson-ebook/dp/B002DYJR4G}

^{[3] https://priceonomics.com/about-that-quote-information-wants-to-be-free/}