Day 1: Major challenges from a policy legal and ethical perspective, preventing smallholder farmers benefiting from data sharing

I know of a policy/ethical issue that prevents farmers from accessing what they need to know to grow and protect their crops sustainably. Context: Ressources to produce quality databases is limited. What we must avoid by all means is redundancy. I would humbly argue that when an instiution like the FAO decides to develop say a database of all plant health products (&use direction) available by crop/pest/country, such a database should not exist already. If it already exists, one should find a cooperative solution instead of a competitive one. If after working on such a database for 10 years, one reaches about 30% of the needed information and can not update it, it is a sign that a cooperation path should be taken. If nevertheless, one pursue the duplication, I would argue that it is the open data concept as whole that suffers and consequently, the growers, the food chain, and each and everyone of us.

So my main message is that open data, whatever it is, will not deliver if we stay in the competitive mode and avoid the cooperative mode. There are enough agricultural themes for all the existing agricultural institutions but the attibution should be by merit, globally fair and avoid competitive duplication. Kind regards to all.

Welcome to this E-consultation on "Ethical, legal and policy aspects of open data affecting farmers".

The issues around Cambridge Analytica’s use of Facebook data in the US Election, the US Congress hearings and the EU law makers discussions with Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder, around data and its privacy make one crucial revelation; that policy and law makers even in the most developed countries have not yet caught up to the use of data and information in today’s world of ubiquitous information and communications technologies (ICTs) use.  The concerns expressed in these events were largely around transgressed ethics and not law of the land. Collecting, collating, sharing and using data and information collected through social media as done by Facebook and Cambridge Analytica did not break any laws simply because the rules did not exist at that time.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) now directly in force since May 25, 2018 in Europe and indirectly across the world, since flow of data knows no boundaries, deals by design only with three primary areas: personal data, consent for its use, and privacy. In my own country, the Supreme Court of India is hearing on Aadhar, the Unique Identification Number for all resident Indians and the larger issue of privacy and possible misuse of personal data. Here also the triggers for enacting the GDPR and the Court hearings have been ethics and not breaking of the existing laws.  In fact, in India, the law either does not exist or is very weak around these issues.

To the best of my knowledge, when it comes to farming and agriculture, there are yet no examples of specific national policies or laws that concern with generation, flow, sharing and use of data. There are initiatives to use ICTs for agricultural development and enabling farmers through information. There are non-binding charters and instruments such as through financial support to share data of and with farmers. We can use this E-consultation to generate an inventory of national policies, rules and regulations around or impinge upon the generation, flow, sharing and exchange of agricultural data and information.

Policy making for farmers and the agricultural sector is fraught with political and social dangers and thus most political systems desist from it. Policy making can only happen when there is adequate awareness around the implications of acting or not acting on an issue. While many of us who work in applying ICT to farming, agriculture and its development and in bringing efficiency and greater economy in Agri-food systems can demonstrate use and beneficial applications and concepts and there is acceptance by national leaders on the benefits of using ICTs in farming and agriculture, the issues have not reached the mainstream public whose support is essential for formulating these policies. There are thus two issues, the first of awareness and the second of maturity of the issues before policies emerge. In case of data from social media, it appears that the Cambridge Analytica episode created mass awareness and GDPR demonstrated the evolving maturity of the European nations to the issue of data privacy.

Policy making requires awareness, inclusion and implementation. My own experience in this area, largely in developing countries, has been that we, who expound the use of data, information and ICTs, have yet to reach adequately the policy and law makers or even farmers to create the awareness needed around data and information use by farmers and in agriculture and Agri-food systems. If the modern world now stresses inclusiveness, we have yet to suggest who should be included in policy making in this area. We, with our considerable expertise have also to inform that the implementation of policies will require Institutions, structures and capacities and suggest what they will be?

When Policy makers discuss matters related to applications and use of ICTs, data and information in agriculture and farming, they demand clarity of the economic and social impact of what we, as the experts, are advocating. We, most of the times, fail to provide this information in a tangible, useful and understandable form.

Coming to smallholder farmers in developing countries there is considerable anecdotal information now that a more knowledge intensive farming and agriculture will be as beneficial through productivity gains and market participation if not more than of farmers in developed countries. In the context of this E-consultation, policies for these smallholder farmers will need to cover how they will be able to bear the costs, access the technologies for generation, management, sharing and exchange and use of data as also the benefits that accrue from their efforts? Embedded in these policies will be the directions for rules, regulations, regulatory mechanisms, the building of the support structures, infrastructure and capacities. In this E-consultation, we need to discuss these elements in the context of policy making and its implementation also.

What challenges are related to accessing data and sharing data? In his opening to this e-consultation, Ajit Maru brought forwards important challenges that are often mentioned in connection to data access/sharing: that is, lacking laws and policies regarding how we need to deal with farm data. The issue of 'privacy' often comes up in relation to data, and Maru brings it forwards too, in relation to the recent discussion about Facebook-data.

As my expertise lies in ethics, I would like to elaborate on this a little further. It seems to me that we should not set the laws too soon, but first leave some time for small-scale experimentation. If we formulate laws that protect the privacy of, for example, farmers, then a lot of the possibilities that ICT offers to shape new collaborations between stakeholders in a smart farming network will no longer be possible.

In the literature on ethics of smart farming -which is at present still limited- privacy issues are often brought forwards by authors who talk about data in terms of 'ownership'.  Who owns the data? That is the main question that they ask about data. Ownership can be looked at in different ways. Farmers frequently think that they own the data, as they collect them at their farms. Let's call these data the 'primary data'.  Yet, the data are not worth much if they are not interpreted by ICT specialists who develop the algorithms that establish menaingful connections between large amounts of data collected at different farms. The interpreters of the data often consider themselves the owners of the 'computed data'. Ownership comes with rights: the owners of something can use it for their own benefit. Related to ownership questions is therefore the question who can use data for what purposes? Can ICT specialists use the computed data to inform their decisions on the stock market, for example? And how can farmers be ensured that their data won't be shared with their competitors?

Understanding the challenges in terms of 'ownership' issues, calls for protective measures. Privacy-laws protect the rights of the owners. Privacy issues come up here as property is often considered private and owners can decide about their property as they see fit.

But talking about data in terms of 'ownership' also limits the possible ways in which parters in a  network can fruitfully cooperate. It is also possible to approach farms as actors that have a role in realizeing societal goals. This would lead to a different way to look at issues related to data access and sharing, such as for example: who should have access to data if we want to realize the societal goals of smart farming? In a European context that I know best, these public goals can be -for example- to check whether farms diminish their impact on the environment, to enhance public acceptance of production processes, or to to foster food safety. Considering these issues it may be worthwhile to give governmental organizations access to data, or consumers, for ICT could foster new -less labor intensive- ways to monitor the environmental friendliness of farms or to establish fruitful exchanges between producers and consumers about -for example- animal welfare.

It is important to set laws, such as Maru proposes. But in my view we should not do it too soon, as this risks to close off possibilities that smart farming offers. The 'smartening' of farms also opens up a possibility to reconsider the components of the social networks  around farms, and the types of relationships between them that we want to foster. It would seem wise, therefore, to carefully consider the pro's and con's of different ways to shape these networks in varied contexts, before we create the laws. In this way laws are able to support the relationships that we want to bring about around smart farms, and they will not impose obstacles to them.

Issues relating to data access and data sharing would therefore have to focus first on the type of relationships we want to establish, and why. After that we can consider in a more informed way how we can prevent unwanted use (or misuse) of data and seek ways to prevent that, such as by means of laws. 

The question mentions "open data". For the GODAN Action Online courses we have been using one of the definitions from the Open Data Handbook: "Open data is data that can be freely used, reused (modified) and redistributed (shared) by anyone." The recent note "Harnessing the Power of Data for Smallholders" (http://dx.doi.org/10.7490/f1000research.1115402.1) also discussed data for which it is not so obvious that it is open. One of the streams that are distinguished is exported data' , i.e. 'data generated and collated on the farm for use off the farm'. The note note states that " This is usually processed, aggregated or combined with other data and information generated elsewhere". I can see that in the aggregation process data could be anonymised as a pre-condition to open it up.

But I came upon a recent report about the potential role of farm management systems that can provide financial intitutions with credible and verifiable data on smallholders that could support agriculture lending decisions  (Okech, K., Alex, K., Singora, B., Ndonga, S., Olong, P., & Kenyanito, L. (2017). Bridging the Gap : The role of data in deepening smallholder farmer financing.  https://agra.org/news/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/20170509-Bridging-the-G... ) The report discusses if the necessary regulatory framework is in place in the Kenyan context. Such data exchanges can certainly not be 'open'.

So my question is: are such data part of this discussion?

Smallholder farmers are not given the platform on the policy dailogue and thier voices are not heard. when polices are developed the farmers are not consulted and the policies developed  are not in favour of the farmers. In addition farmers do not have access to data especially the agricultural data. So information is power and smallholder faremers are found wanting when it scomes to data in agricultture.

1 a Challenges related to accessing data

Small farmers' data on their own production base (land data and production system) are captured by a number of organisations such as factories receiving their produce, insurance companies which charge premiums, research and other institutions who collect, process and store these information in their individual databases,. Some of these stakeholders may even exchange these data for given purposes. Farmers on the other hand have difficulty in acessing their own data from a centralised database which is inexistent for the time being. For e.g. if they need to benefit from certain government schemes, they must produce evidence from these same sources and it is a real hassle.

1 b Challenges relating to sharing data

Even if there is a general legal provision through the Data Protection Act (2017), small farmers hardly are aware of their rights. They are often rebuked by officials who invoke confidentiality clauses. Yet there exists lots of data lying in different databases which are not shared for e.g. there is no framework for sharing crop insurance data (detailed production and location of farmers land) with extension and research departments for the benefit of small lfarmers.

In uganda the Data bill is still in parliament for discussion where it has been held for some long time. We have no straight polices concerning open data.  Data collectors and stewards in this respect government ministries, institutions and so on have not done enough to inform the public on the availability of useful data for smallholder farmers. Youths in Technology and Development in collaboration with Bosch carried out a survey on the needs of smallholders farmers in uganda recently and we wanted to know if farmers really get data  from government. supprisingly all respondents were ignorant of the idea of data even the most educated among the farmers. To me the first challenge related to accessiing data is lack of publicity about the availabilty of agricultural data.

There is no doubt that there is a power asymmetry
between farmers and large agribusinesses.With wireless sensors on tractors
monitoring or dictating every decision a farmer makes(from when to plant the
crops and irrigate them,to the quantity and timing of applying pesticides to
the precise day to harvest) big agribusinesses can aggregate large quantities
of previously proprietary farming data enabling them a privileged position and
that means less autonomy for the farmers.

Farmers don’t really know the true value of their
data.Many of them are unaware of the extent to which their data get
stored,traded and analysed for future use.In other cases they don’t even give
their consent for the data to be collected,processed and futher used.

Most small farmers have little use for precision
farming as these technologies are mostly used to industrial farms.

And what about policies and contacts between farmers
and agribusinesses? Most of the farmers don’t have the information and
knowledge.They are more interested in their production. So many times they are
willing to sign a contact with a company even if the terms aren’t in their favour.

So the question remains:

How can there be a further legal address against
government,big co-operations? What about 
binding rules concerning contracts?What about policies?They should have
a more legal base and approach.

In my opinion further legislation with national law is
needed to remedy misuse of data and inform farmers about their rights. Also
international law.

It is certain that the principles of the GDPR are also
applicable to the field of agriculture and farmers. Also the farmers
organisations should play a bigger role to inform and protect the interest and the
rights of the farmers.

Small farmers also often lack a verifiable credit history, making it difficult to get loans from financial institutions, and sometimes forcing them to accept far higher than market rate loans in the time when they are waiting for the harvest.

Through use of the blockchain, a record of the crops they have grown, payments made and received, etc. could give them a "digital" record, whether stored in the blockchain or by other means, which could give lenders a record to look at when considering loans.

Certain cryptocurrencies are even well equipped for micropayments, so farmers could build up a transaction history even for small payments at a local shop.   

Access to bank accounts for smallholders

Cell phone based apps could be used to use cryptocurrencies to send an receive money even when the nearest branch-bank is far away. The technology already exists that would allow a farmer to go to a local shop where the shopkeeper is an agent of the bank.  On a basic android-based cell phone with camera they can do take a picture of their eye (an iris-scan, much less scary than that phrase sounds) to verify who they are, and without having to memorize any long crypto account number their identity is verified, and they can receive funds sent via a cryptocurrency account.  More low tech, if they have a traditional account with a brick-an-mortar bank, no cryptocurrency need be involved, they just access their bank account via this iris-scan ID, and withdraw their funds, with the local shopkeeper recording the transaction. Happy to give more technical details on how this works.

Although m-pesa offers a similar value proposition and may not be worth replacing where it is used over telecom networks, this is a technological leapfrog that could be extremely helpful in places where farmers have no access to banking services.

Again, this builds a financial transaction history which could be helpful to smallholders who have no credit/financial history to show when they are seeking to access finance to buy seed and pay their bills till the harvest comes in.

Smallhoilder farmers may not have access to crop insurance, and if they do, they may have trouble getting insurance companies to pay when crops fail.  

Sensors could be placed relatively inexpensively that measure rainfall, and smart contracts (blockchain) could be used to make payouts automatic if in a given month a set level of rainfall that is necessary for a succesful harvest is not met.  Thus the farmer does not have to chase the insurance company and fight a long process to be paid, and the insurance company does not have to send claims specialists to verify the condition of the crop.

Le manque de regulation lois et politique consistant tant sur l'accès au données et le partage des données par les petits et moyens producteurs africains depuis et avant les indépendances est un serieux problème au développement de l'agriculture dans cette zone.

En effet les études sur les models et les stratégies de productions dans le milieu africain avant et meme apres la colonisation (indépendances) n'ont tenu compte le plus souvent ni des droits d'auteurs ni de la propriété intellectuelle.

C'est ainsi que beaucoup de modèles africains ont été améliorés ailleurs sans que les auteurs de ces techniques et innovations gagnent le vrai prix de leur innovation en afrique.

Il sagit aujourdhui d'échanger les données et innovation africaines au meme titre que les grande organisations échangent de toutes les données innovantes sur le marché en tenant compte de leur droits et autres bénéfices.

Des structures telle que la FAO et bien d'autres pourraient accompagner les états africains sur une réglementation et des politiques consolidés dans  ce domaine de partage de données.

J'ai des examples concrets sur les biofertilisants, le moringa l'elevage des escargots et des crabes et bien d'autres que la reglementation et les politiques manquantes n'ont pas pu permettre un bon développement en exploitation en Afrique Centrale et de L'Ouest

Overarching considerations from a policy and legal perspective.

Firstly I would like highlight that policy and legal constructs should not be seen as two different concepts but rather as a regulatory hierarchy.  Often objectives such as “open data” or even just data sharing is not accomplished because of the disjuncture between the policy and legal constructs.    

Secondly, I would like to support the preceding arguments around the premature development of legal mechanisms and associated policies.  There is a place for the formalisation of legal constructs and the associated policies, but an even more important consideration is the timing of its development.  Over the past few years the international data focus was divided between the ever increasing legal construct in support of protection of personal information and cyber security on the one hand and open data initiatives on the other.   

1a: Challenges related to accessing data:

More often than not access constrains stem from the lack of access mechanisms such as metadata repositories, data nodes, but more prevalent but less pronounced is the lack of insight in to the data and potential application.  I am often faced with the argument that “the data is not available” or “data cannot be accessed”.  I then pose the following questions - What data do you need?  What do you want to do with the data or wat will the data inform? At this point the discussion normally veer down a rabbit hole of misconstrued user requirements.  Thus access to data is severely hindered because of the open endedness of data requests.  

The main reasons cited for access constraint, from a governmental perspective (especially for technical data e.g. soil, climate,  agricultural potential etc.) relates to the potential misinterpretation of data or an unwillingness that the data be repurposed for competitive advantage. 

#Sipiwe Manjengwa: “Smallholder farmers are not given the platform on the policy dialogue and their voices are not heard.”  I agree with your statement.  But the problem is bigger than that.  The Smallholder farmers are often not aware of policy frameworks (e.g. data infrastructure legislation or policies on the sale of data) that can be used to provide access to data. 

1b: Challenges related to sharing data:

1. On a macro level there are a few challenges associated with the sharing of data. From a governmental perspective there is sometimes an unwillingness to share data (especially for technical data e.g. soil, climate,  agricultural potential etc.)  because of the potential misinterpretation of the data or an unwillingness to allow for the data to be repurposed to derive competitive advantage.
2. From a commercial perspective the big commercial farming enterprises have a monopoly on data flow within their value chains because of their investment in technology and decision support tools.

I also agree - I think the CGIAR's approach is a useful one as it recognises that all data cannot (nor shouold not) be made open - ie open as possible and closed as necessary

The CGIAR Open Access and Data Managemetn Policy stems from – and complies with – the CGIAR Principles on the Management of Intellectual Assets (“CGIAR IA Principles”) which expands on Article 6.1 of the CGIAR IA Principles which provides that “The CGIAR and the Centers shall promptly and broadly disseminate their research results, subject to confidentiality as may be associated with [certain] permitted restrictions, or subject to limited delays to seek IP Rights [(patents, etc.)]”.

When thinking about data sharing, it is useful to think about what benefits farmers are getting for the sharing of their data. Given that there are so many different types of agricultural data that is generated off farms: ie machinery data, financial data, personal data, soil, yield, nutrient and chemical use data etc it is important to distinguish between which types of data farmers are willing to share. Often machinery data etc is willingly shared however personal, financial and production data may be considered more valuable to individiual farmers and what is the incentive being provided to them for sharing this information?

It may be useful to look to the notion of the  access and benefit sharing arrangements that are required under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in  Article 15. The main principles are countries have national sovereignty over their genetic resources, but that there should be facilitated access and benefit sharing under mutually agreed terms and with prior informed consent. The issue of prior informed consent and mutually agreed terms is something that would certainly assist to address the power imbalance between those data aggregators and those farmers who are being asked to share their data ? It is a fair question to ask what is being given in return to those farmers who share their data ?

The comment below is posted on behalf of Joshua Toews

Common sense would suggest that increasing supply of data would increase access to data. Increasing supply would decrease the price, making it more accessible. But even if policy makers find a way to increase the supply of data, there are two problems. First, databases may not be good substitutes for one another. This would limit the competition between database sellers, therefore limiting the downward pressure on the price. Second, to the extent that the databases are good substitutes, this contributes to duplicating work and therefore overall economic inefficiency. Data is non-rival so producing two similar datasets is a waste of time.

In addition to being non-rival, data is also excludable. In this sense, it is similar to infrastructure like telephone lines. This poses a sharing problem as the market for data is likely to tend towards a natural monopoly. If it is firms, rather than governments, that capitalize on a first mover advantage, it is unlikely that these monopolies will fall into the hands of actors who are amenable to sharing the data openly

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E-Consultation Moderators

I think  making  data freely  available is  the  direction  to  go  however,  there still  exists  barriers  that  need  to  be  surmounted which  include;

-The gap  between information  that  anyone  can use  and  the  data  that  anyone  can  get  needs to  be  plugged. Making data open is not always about licences or the format issues, but it is alsoabout comprehension and access. Open data should not require additional time, resources and expertise to be used.

-  There  is  a significant  cost  in  making  quality   data Open .The  question  is  who  is  to  bear  the  cost, Publishers or  the  users?-What  are  the  tools  available to  analyze and critic the  data?The policies  to  be  formulated and  implemented  by  governments  and  institutions  should address such  concerns.

Finally, from  an  ethical  perspective,even  with  good  policies about open  data,there  is  still  need for a culture change among  individuals and  institutions  as  well as  governments  to  encourage  sharing information among  stakeholders in  the  sector 

Among the major challenges is a recognition that data can be, and is, often “owned”. Ownership rights accrue most typically not to farmers, but to intermediaries who invest in the aggregation and organization of data. While many in the “open” data community (myself included) would like to believe that data is incapable of being owned, i.e. a common pool resource, or alternatively if owned is owned by farmers about whom or whose land or whose activities the data relates, this is legally incorrect.

For more explanation of the ownership of open data, and possible governance options, you might be interested in this GODAN paper: 

http://www.godan.info/documents/ownership-open-data-governance-options-agriculture-and-nutrition-0

What do you think of agricultural data ownership and its impact on farmers (especially small-holder farmers)? What is the best governance option to ensure the benefits of agricultural data are shared inclusively and fairly?

A key considertation here is, in my opinion, how countries aggregate that data from a multiplicity of players with differing (and sometimes competing) demands. There is need for not just a policy framework on how developing countries deal with this, but an entire strategy detailing this data is processed and in what form it is made available to consumers, especially the smallholder farmers. This is important because accessibility may not necessarily mean that smallholder farmers are able to make us of data. In Uganda for instance, farmers can access weather information (in some cases using basic mobile phones) but the data is complicated for that consumer to make any sense of. Accessibility and consumption are inseparable. Ordinarily, the data should be going to the Ministry of Agriculture for interpreation (and translation where applicable), packaging for different regions and value chains and disseminated using various channels that smallholder farmers can access. 

The private sector and the development agencies have personalised data that they collect from the farmers. Some of this information is actually quite personal and private. Irrespective of the ethical dimensions that can be cited in this regard, these entities do not make this data available in most cases. They hold it as critical trade information to leverage in competing for markets and/or projects from the donor agencies.  It is not even available in any form for use and sharing by the people from whom it was collected. This presents both a legal and ethical challenges related to how smallholders are treated in the iformation/data market place.

Benificial data was almost available even 30-40 years back.What the people of each society wants is that they shall not acess the individuals,records.

About 80 percent of African countries governance have not been able to provide infrastructures for data storage as farmers information corner, resources such as personnel that collect data and inform their governments are not available for it due to budget constrain for the past 30 years, the ICT policy exist but do not accommodate and linked to farmers, mobile network are trying their best without government support on data for information, for price awareness and for crop production improvement. This is crucial and has decreased severely the power of African countries to feed other continents. Small holders are ready to work on any available information that can lead them to more production and benefiting from accessing markets where possible.

Good morning all from Lagos, Nigeria. Pardon me for joining this discussion very late and this is attributed to the level of infrastructure that prompt effective access to data.

The peculiarity of this discussion in Nigeria could take some of the discussants afar backward because of the level of poor infrastructures in most rural and peri-urban communities. Most smallholder farmers who are majorly in these communities lack access to data due to poor or epileptic power supply and level of awareness and hence agricultural data and innovation take longer time to reach the farmers or might not even access. However, the causative agent of this challenge is the level of government leadership in our nation.