Agricultural Data Rights

ISSUE: 

Agricultural operational data is becoming one of the most valuable assets in the modern food system. Through sustainability programs, Climate-Smart initiatives, carbon markets, supply chain reporting, ESG frameworks, and precision agricultural systems, increasing amounts of farm-level data are being collected, aggregated, benchmarked, and incorporated into broader reporting systems. The issue is not opposition to conservation, stewardship, research, or voluntary incentive-based programs. Rather, the concern is who controls, accesses, monetizes, and benefits from operational agricultural data and the systems built from it; especially when information collected for one purpose may later support financing decisions, procurement requirements, ESG reporting, lender expectations, or broader supply-chain governance structures.

American Agri-Women Request:

As Congress moves forward toward final Farm Bill negotiations, clarifying language modernizing Section 1619 could help ensure farmer protections remain effective in an increasingly data-driven agricultural economy.

Modernization concepts for Section 1619 should include:

-       extending protections to third-party data collection systems;

-       clarifying limits on secondary uses of aggregated operational data;

-       strengthening farmer consent and transparency requirements;

-       reinforcing that participation in USDA-supported sustainability reporting systems remains voluntary and incentive-based at the farmer level;

-       and ensuring that USDA-supported or USDA-overseen systems do not unintentionally evolve into coercive market-access requirements.

Background:

Current Section 1619 protections in the 2008 Farm Bill were written primarily to protect individually identifiable farm records collected through USDA programs. However, modern systems increasingly derive substantial strategic and economic value from aggregated operational data itself – including benchmarking systems, procurement requirements, financing expectations, predictive analytics, sustainability reporting, and supply-chain intelligence.

Across agriculture, many farmers report participation in sustainability reporting systems is described as “voluntary” at the program level but increasingly functions as a condition of market access filtering from the processors, suppliers, lenders, retailers, and procurement systems to the farm level.

Our concerns are no longer theoretical. Nebraska recently enacted the nation’s first agricultural data privacy law focused on farmer ownership, consent, transparency, and restrictions on third-party use of farm data. Other states are actively exploring similar approaches as agriculture becomes increasingly data-driven and interconnected through sustainability, carbon, and supply-chain reporting systems.

This is not just a data issue. This is sensitive agricultural intelligence that needs to be protected at the heart of food security.