Agriculture Data Codes of Conduct

The Webinar was produced by Suchith Anand and Chipo Msengezi, in partnership with GODAN's Data Rights and Responsible Data Working Group.

To take full advantage of digital agriculture and data to enable the transformation of agri-food networks, trust around agriculture data access and use needs to be fostered. To this end, a range of initiatives are currently being investigated and implemented, including education and awareness programmes, data co-operatives and other collaborative models. Most notably, since 2014, voluntary ag-data codes of practice have emerged to not only help develop ‘good’ ag-data practices but also to build trust in the way ag-data is managed. Broadly stated, ag-data codes of practice act beyond legal mandates (i.e. government legislation) and attempt to both harness the benefits of ag-data and protect producers’ privacy and security. More specifically, data codes tend to focus on the key areas that give rise to mistrust: consent, disclosure and transparency around ag-data practices.

The Webinar was co-presented by Leanne Wiseman (Griffith Law School, Griffith University) and Chris Addison (Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Co-operation, ACP-EU (CTA)). In it they examine the models of the New Zealand Farm Data Code of Practice (‘NZ Farm Data Code’), the American Farm Bureau Federation’s Privacy and Security Principles for Farm Data (‘Principles for Farm Data’) and the EU Code on Agricultural Data Sharing by Contractual Agreement (‘EU Code’), and will highlight the strengths and potential weaknesses of the different models. In addition, some of the work being undertaken with farmers organisations will be featured, highlighting their role as potential trust centres for farmers through some of the approaches taken to safeguard the farmers position in voluntary ag-data codes of practice.

About the Panelists

Leanne Wiseman is Associate Professor at the Griffith Law School, Griffith University, and is Associate Director of the Australian Centre for Intellectual Property in Agriculture (ACIPA). Leanne is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research lies at the intersection of law, agriculture, and technology. To date, her research has addressed the application of intellectual property law to the regulation of various domains including; the impact of open access on scholarly research and communication practices and its underlying datasets, and the intellectual property and licensing issues arising from the new digital technologies embedded in agricultural industries. Much of her recent work focuses on agricultural data governance issues, including the legal, social and ethical implications of smart farming or digital agriculture, both nationally and internationally.

Chris Addison is Senior Coordinator for Data4Ag at the ACP-EU Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Development (CTA). He has worked in ICT and knowledge management within the development sector for over 18 years, including holding the post of Director of the non-profit One World Europe. He has worked with a range of development organisations on digitalisation. He contributed to the OpenAire Open Data report as joint author of the Agriculture chapter. Whilst at IFPRI, he commissioned the conversion of the Global Hunger Index data to linked open data. He currently manages the Blockchain and Data4Ag projects at CTA and he is also editor of the ICT update.