[House Hearing, 115 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE FUTURE OF FARMING: TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS, OPPORTUNITIES, AND
CHALLENGES FOR PRODUCERS
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
GENERAL FARM COMMODITIES
AND RISK MANAGEMENT
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JULY 13, 2017
__________
Serial No. 115-9
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Printed for the use of the Committee on Agriculture
agriculture.house.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
26-385 PDF WASHINGTON : 2017
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Publishing Office,
http://bookstore.gpo.gov. For more information, contact the GPO Customer Contact Center,
U.S. Government Publishing Office. Phone 202-512-1800, or 866-512-1800 (toll-free).
E-mail, [email protected].
COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE
K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas, Chairman
GLENN THOMPSON, Pennsylvania COLLIN C. PETERSON, Minnesota,
Vice Chairman Ranking Minority Member
BOB GOODLATTE, Virginia, DAVID SCOTT, Georgia
FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma JIM COSTA, California
STEVE KING, Iowa TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota
MIKE ROGERS, Alabama MARCIA L. FUDGE, Ohio
BOB GIBBS, Ohio JAMES P. McGOVERN, Massachusetts
AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia FILEMON VELA, Texas, Vice Ranking
ERIC A. ``RICK'' CRAWFORD, Arkansas Minority Member
SCOTT DesJARLAIS, Tennessee MICHELLE LUJAN GRISHAM, New Mexico
VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri ANN M. KUSTER, New Hampshire
JEFF DENHAM, California RICHARD M. NOLAN, Minnesota
DOUG LaMALFA, California CHERI BUSTOS, Illinois
RODNEY DAVIS, Illinois SEAN PATRICK MALONEY, New York
TED S. YOHO, Florida STACEY E. PLASKETT, Virgin Islands
RICK W. ALLEN, Georgia ALMA S. ADAMS, North Carolina
MIKE BOST, Illinois DWIGHT EVANS, Pennsylvania
DAVID ROUZER, North Carolina AL LAWSON, Jr., Florida
RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana TOM O'HALLERAN, Arizona
TRENT KELLY, Mississippi JIMMY PANETTA, California
JAMES COMER, Kentucky DARREN SOTO, Florida
ROGER W. MARSHALL, Kansas LISA BLUNT ROCHESTER, Delaware
DON BACON, Nebraska
JOHN J. FASO, New York
NEAL P. DUNN, Florida
JODEY C. ARRINGTON, Texas
______
Matthew S. Schertz, Staff Director
Anne Simmons, Minority Staff Director
______
Subcommittee on General Farm Commodities and Risk Management
ERIC A. ``RICK'' CRAWFORD, Arkansas, Chairman
FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma RICHARD M. NOLAN, Minnesota,
MIKE ROGERS, Alabama Ranking Minority Member
BOB GIBBS, Ohio TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota
AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia CHERI BUSTOS, Illinois
SCOTT DesJARLAIS, Tennessee LISA BLUNT ROCHESTER, Delaware
RICK W. ALLEN, Georgia DAVID SCOTT, Georgia
MIKE BOST, Illinois SEAN PATRICK MALONEY, New York
RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana STACEY E. PLASKETT, Virgin Islands
DON BACON, Nebraska AL LAWSON, Jr., Florida
NEAL P. DUNN, Florida TOM O'HALLERAN, Arizona
JODEY C. ARRINGTON, Texas
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Crawford, Hon. Eric A. ``Rick'', a Representative in Congress
from Arkansas, opening statement............................... 1
Prepared statement........................................... 2
Nolan, Hon. Richard M., a Representative in Congress from
Minnesota, opening statement................................... 3
Witnesses
Tiller, Billy, Co-Founder and Advisor to the CEO, Grower
Information Services Cooperative, Lubbock, TX.................. 5
Prepared statement........................................... 7
Janzen, J.D., Todd J., President, Janzen Agricultural Law LLC,
Indianapolis, IN............................................... 18
Prepared statement........................................... 19
Casurella, Deborah, Chief Executive Officer, Independent Data
Management, LLC, Hudson, WI.................................... 28
Prepared statement........................................... 29
Royse, J.D., Roger, Founder and Owner, Royse Law Firm, PC and
Royse AgTech Innovation Network, Menlo Park, CA................ 35
Prepared statement........................................... 36
THE FUTURE OF FARMING: TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS, OPPORTUNITIES, AND
CHALLENGES FOR PRODUCERS
----------
THURSDAY, JULY 13, 2017
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on General Farm Commodities and Risk
Management,
Committee on Agriculture,
Washington, D.C.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:01 a.m., in
Room 1300, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Eric A.
``Rick'' Crawford [Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
Members present: Representatives Crawford, Gibbs, Allen,
Abraham, Bacon, Dunn, Arrington, Nolan, Walz, Bustos, Blunt
Rochester, Maloney, Plaskett, Lawson, and O'Halleran.
Staff present: Emily Wong, Mollie Wilken, Rachel Millard,
Trevor White, Liz Friedlander, Mike Stranz, Troy Phillips,
Nicole Scott, and Carly Reedholm.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ERIC A. ``RICK'' CRAWFORD, A
REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM ARKANSAS
The Chairman. Good morning. This hearing of the
Subcommittee on General Farm Commodities and Risk Management
entitled, The Future of Farming: Technological Innovations,
Opportunities, and Challenges for Producers, will come to
order. Thank you for joining us today.
Yesterday, the full Committee held a productive discussion
on how technology is influencing specialty crop production.
Today, our Subcommittee will explore how promising new
information technologies, and the increasing utilization of
data in agriculture, are influencing the future of farming.
It is a critical time for everyone involved in production
agriculture as we face tough choices ahead. Given tight margins
and a continued slump in the prices at the farm gate, even
routine day-to-day decision making can determine whether the
farmer will turn an annual profit. These challenges in farm
country underscore the importance of the decisions we make in
the next farm bill, which we will have to write with fewer
resources than we had the last go-round.
But as we begin to answer the tough questions, one thing is
clear for farmers and policymakers alike: Technology plays an
undeniably important role in how we address these challenges.
The decisions we make surrounding data and agriculture
technology will decide the future of farming in America and
impact producers for years to come as technologies continue to
expand and evolve.
This is the third hearing we have held in the last year-
and-a-half related to big data and the ground is already
quickly shifting. Big data is influencing planting decisions,
optimizing yields, it gives farmers tools to more accurately
assess soil health and water usage, and it is even cutting down
on labor costs. Farmers are also quickly learning that smart
investments in new technology will not only make them more
efficient, but will also conserve resources and ensure their
land will remain productive for generations to come. Finally,
big data is making USDA farm programs more accurate, efficient,
and easier for farmers to navigate.
But while cutting-edge technology promises many benefits,
there are also significant challenges to overcome. There
continues to be considerable uncertainty in the legal and
regulatory landscape. Farmers are justifiably concerned about
the privacy and security of their data, while questions loom
over data ownership. Inadequate rural broadband access is also
a significant barrier for farmers who lack the high-speed
Internet needed to take full advantage of the innovations we
are discussing today. And, as the industry continues to make
investments in its future, the Federal Government must keep
pace to modernize and adapt to a rapidly changing environment.
Our distinguished witnesses here with us today will present
some of the promising benefits of big data in agriculture and
will also enlighten us about how they are tackling the many
challenges they are facing. I look forward to hearing their
views as we assess the role of government in the modernization
of agriculture. I believe this is key to ensuring that America
remains the most abundant and affordable supplier of food and
fiber in the world.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Crawford follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Eric A. ``Rick'' Crawford, a Representative
in Congress from Arkansas
Thank you for joining us today.
Yesterday, the full Committee held a productive discussion on how
technology is influencing specialty crop production. Today, our
Subcommittee will explore how promising new information technologies
and the increasing utilization of data in agriculture is influencing
the future of farming.
It is a critical time for everyone involved in production
agriculture as we face tough choices ahead. Given tight margins and a
continued slump in prices at the farm gate, even routine, day-to-day
decision-making can determine whether the farmer will turn an annual
profit. These challenges in farm country underscore the importance of
the decisions we make in the next farm bill, which we will have to
write with fewer resources than we had the last go-round.
But as we begin to answer the tough questions, one thing's clear--
for farmers and policymakers alike--technology plays an undeniably
important role in how we address these challenges. The decisions we
make surrounding data and agriculture technology will decide the future
of farming in America and impact producers for years to come as
technologies continue expanding and evolving.
This is the third hearing we've held in the last year-and-a-half
related to big data and the ground is already quickly shifting. Big
data is influencing planting decisions and optimizing yields, it gives
farmers tools to more accurately assess soil health and water usage,
and it's even cutting down on labor costs. Farmers are also quickly
learning that smart investments in new technology will not only make
them more efficient, but will also conserve resources and ensure their
land will remain productive for generations to come. Finally, big data
is making USDA farm programs more accurate, efficient and easier for
farmers to navigate.
But while cutting-edge agriculture technology promises many
benefits, there are also significant challenges to overcome. There
continues to be considerable uncertainty in the legal and regulatory
landscape. Farmers are justifiably concerned about the privacy and
security of their data while questions loom over data ownership.
Inadequate rural broadband access is also a significant barrier for
many farmers who lack the high-speed Internet needed to take full
advantage of the innovations we are discussing today. And, as the
industry continues making investments in its future, the Federal
Government must keep pace to modernize and adapt to a rapidly changing
environment.
Our distinguished witnesses here with us today will present some of
the promising benefits of big data in agriculture, and will also
enlighten us about how they are tackling the many challenges they're
facing. I look forward to hearing their views as we assess the role of
government in the modernization of agriculture. I believe this is key
to ensuring that America remains the most abundant and affordable
supplier of food and fiber in the world.
The Chairman. I would now like to recognize my friend, the
Ranking Member from Minnesota, Mr. Nolan, for any comments he
would like to make.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD M. NOLAN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM MINNESOTA
Mr. Nolan. Can you hear me? There we go. I had it covered
up.
Thank you, Chairman Crawford, for getting me turned on
here, if you will pardon the expression. But I thank the other
Members of the Committee, the Subcommittee here, for holding
this important hearing regarding the future of farming and the
opportunities and the challenges presented by data technology
innovations.
And thanks to the great panel of witnesses that we have
here. We thank you for coming. We have a couple old sayings
around this town. First is, you better come to town and make a
case for yourself, because if you don't there is a possibility
that this town might not know you exist. Worse yet, if they
know you exist and you don't show up, they might think you
don't care. Thank you for taking the time to be here.
And you should know that the proceedings and the knowledge
and the information garnered here will end up going far beyond
the Members of this Committee and our staffs. It is reviewed
and paid attention to by policymakers and thinkers and
advocates not just in this country, but all over the world.
Your testimony is very, very important here today.
And the other old admonition is that in this town, if you
are not at the table you might be on the menu, and you don't
want to be there.
So welcome.
The fact is that technology innovations have greatly
benefited our farm economy. My gosh, when I was first elected
to the Congress, if you reaped 80, 90 bushels an acre of corn,
you were an all-star. And nowadays, why, it is like get out of
town, where have you been? We have quadrupled yields, not just
for corn but so many of the other important commodities that
have not only helped feed America, but have helped feed in many
cases a starving and a hungry world. Agriculture has played
such an incredibly important role in our economy and in the
world economy.
More recently, farmers have become more efficient with
those crop yields, as I mentioned, do a better job of
predicting the environment and innovation there through the use
of data technologies. And while we have undoubtedly seen great
benefits from these innovations, there are also important
questions we must answer related to ownership of data collected
on farms as well as its security and its privacy.
We must also assure that access to information is balanced,
does not allow for the manipulation of markets, as we have
sometimes seen in the past. Some of us may remember how clever
the Russians were back in the seventies at manipulating our
farm markets, not to imply any parallels with what is happening
today.
Finally, we must continue to invest in rural America,
broadband, to ensure that our producers have the ability to
receive and to send data at acceptable speeds and affordable
prices.
High-speed broadband is not unlike what the REA and the
Rural Telephone Administration were for past generations. If
you don't have the latest communications capabilities, you are
out of luck. You are not going to grow. You are not going to
prosper. You are not going to be able to fully communicate and
participate in all that America has to offer.
American agriculture might be entering a new era because of
these data technologies, but we need to make sure farmers and
rural communities benefit from these innovations as well.
So with that said, I am looking forward to your testimony.
I know all the other Members of the Subcommittee are looking
forward to your testimony as well. And once again, I thank
Chairman Crawford for holding this important hearing.
Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time.
The Chairman. Thank you, sir, I appreciate it.
We have four distinguished witnesses with us here today,
and I want to introduce each one of them. But first I would
like to recognize the gentleman from Texas to introduce our
first witness.
Mr. Arrington, cotton-eyed Jodey, you are recognized.
Mr. Arrington. There is a story to that, but I will spare
you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is my honor to introduce to you
a fellow west Texan and a friend from my hometown of Lubbock,
Texas, Billy Tiller. He is a fourth-generation ag producer. He
received his accounting degree from the greatest university in
the land, Texas Tech University. He has been on a bank board.
And as a CPA, he understands the business of agriculture, and
he certainly has a unique perspective on industry profitability
and those challenges as an ag lender and what they present to
our ag lenders.
He is an entrepreneur and he has been involved in ag
technology startup companies, where I met him as Vice
Chancellor for Research and Technology Commercialization at
Texas Tech. He and his wife Crystal are parents of four
children and five grandchildren.
We got to visit before this hearing, and I said, ``What do
you want me to say about your background?'' He said, ``Two
things: I am a cotton farmer.'' And that is what he is most
proud to be known as, is a cotton farmer. He said, ``If you are
going to do something to help the cotton farmers, I am in. If
you are not, I am not going to be a part of it.''
That is my philosophy too, Billy. Thank you for being here.
And, Mr. Chairman, thank you for indulging me.
The Chairman. Yes, sir, thank you. The gentleman yields
back.
I would like to introduce Mr. Todd Janzen, President,
Janzen Agricultural Law, from Indianapolis, Indiana.
Welcome.
Ms. Deb Casurella, CEO, Independent Data Management,
Hudson, Wisconsin. And finally, Mr. Roger Royse, founder of
Royse Law Firm in Menlo Park, California.
I would like to direct the witnesses, direct your attention
to the lights in front of you, a green light, a yellow light,
and a red light. It is just like driving. When you see the
light is green, keep your foot on the gas; when it turns
yellow, get ready to stop; and when it is red, slam on the
brakes. And we will get through this and get to our questions
as quickly as we can.
So, having said that, I would like to recognize our first
witness. Mr. Billy Tiller, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF BILLY TILLER, CO-FOUNDER AND ADVISOR TO THE CEO,
GROWER INFORMATION SERVICES COOPERATIVE, LUBBOCK, TX
Mr. Tiller. Thank you, Chairman Crawford, Ranking Member
Nolan. And Jodey, thank you for the introduction.
I would like to add something to his introduction. In the
data world, I am about all farmers. And the beauty is we all
collect acres, we all have planting varieties, and we have
seed, and we put out chemicals. As we do all these things, it
is all measured against land. If I do it in cotton, you can do
it in corn, you can do it in soybeans, you can do it in
specialty crops. That is the beauty of what is going on.
He has pretty well introduced me, so I am going to jump
right into what is going on here. I have a grower information
services cooperative that I founded. It is a cooperative owned
by growers. The idea behind it was to create value and control
for the grower.
Because what we are dealing with today is really a world
where there is some fear among growers, what is going on in
this data world. If we have a governing board at the
cooperative, I am hoping this continues to grow, I think you
will see that really taking hold.
We have 41 states covered, about 1,400 members. And out of
that, I would say there are 10,000 growers that have talked to
me in the last 5 years, have tremendous interest. And when the
platform is up and fully functional, you will see those growers
come in to help us.
I want to talk today about the opportunities, the
challenges, and literally the innovations in agriculture. I
could focus on GiSC, but I want to talk about what I have been
able to see in the last few years.
And as I say that, the opportunity is real. Ag 2.0 and Ag
3.0 is here, and we are seeing some things happen now around
the Internet of Things. There are a lot of challenges to
creating adoption in agriculture, and they are due to the fact
that I have had a lot of tools created for me and many of them
I don't need. They don't solve any of my pain points. They look
cool, they cost a lot of money, but I am looking for things I
can actually put into the farm, I can implement, and that I can
use to collect data.
I would say that so far the value has not exceeded the
maximum cost that has been charged for some of these things,
not all them, but a lot of them. I think there is also fear on
the part of the grower not understanding what is going on. You
will be interested in Mr. Janzen's testimony about something
called the Transparency Evaluator that is very vital to the
industry.
The other thing I would say are the time factors. Farmers
are caught up in prioritizing and reprioritizing their time on
daily basis. When they are collecting data it has to be more of
an automated fashion. It has to be autonomous. They are not
going to go in at night and spend 3 hours actually entering
data about seed varieties and those sorts of things. They are
through at the end of the day. We will be able to use new
technologies that you see coming onto the forefront to be able
to automatically or semiautomatically collect data.
There has been a lot of ag hype, and it has been promises,
promises, promises that have gone on around ag tech companies
and hundreds of millions of dollars that have been invested,
and yet they haven't solved our problem. Money hasn't quite
been the issue.
The ownership issue is there. I would love to sit with any
of you and talk about that. But the ownership of the data, it
is a critical issue. I have groups today tell me, ``Billy, your
co-op, your members, you can't own your data.'' I mean, that is
ludicrous to me. What do you mean, I can't own my data? Are you
going to go tell a small business owner he can't own his data?
That is the craziest thing I have ever heard. Just because I
use a certain piece of equipment, I can't own the data?
I am hung up on I am going to own my data off my cotton
farm, and that way I can do things with it. And I may share it
with third parties so I can get value.
Then there is the concern about disruption in the industry.
There is no doubt we have disruption going on in the industry,
and that creates fear among the industry players. We have to
literally stop the fear among the industry players so they feel
like that we can move forward.
I want to hit a few points before I run out of time here,
and those are, how could you help us? One problem we have is we
need to make sure that we have the rural broadband, the
connectivity in place, and that is a place this Committee could
really play.
I am going to ask you to really think hard as you are
making those investments into the USF fund, those sorts of
things. We have to have them, because we need speed.
I am going to tell you, if these millennials want their
food to talk, and they do, they want traceability, the only way
we are going to make it talk is to actually have connectivity
all the way back to the field level. Keep that in mind.
People are moving to town, but the land is never going to
move, so we need the connectivity back. It is not so much for
the residents. It will help, telemedicine, all those things,
but it is so that we can use it on the farms.
I want to wrap up by talking about on the challenges
something Ken Zuckerberg said. Ken is the head of research for
Rabobank, and in a statement he said: ``We believe that a
standardized system is necessary to drive farmer adoption of
digital agriculture services. Yet without a common data
platform and operating system, it is unlikely that growers, or
the vendors providing precision farming services, will fully
capture the value associated with digital agriculture.''
I would say this last: We are working with a lot of
companies, from big ones like IDM and The Weather Company,
great things that we can innovate and bring right in to groups
like Farmobile and their PUC, to groups like IBM, and Deb's
reporting tool that you are going to hear about. These things
are there. We just have to integrate them, get them back to the
farmer.
Thank you for what you do for the American farmer. I am so
appreciative of how you all build and create and protect the
CLU layer and all those things that you do around section 6 and
section 1619. Thank you for your hard work.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Tiller follows:]
Prepared Statement of Billy Tiller, Co-Founder and Advisor to the CEO,
Grower Information Services Cooperative, Lubbock, TX
Good morning. My name is Billy Tiller, founder of Grower
Information Services Cooperative (GiSC). I am honored to be given the
opportunity to talk to you about the state of ag data innovation today.
My interests in this subject are personal; not only as the founder of
GiSC, but also as a 4th generation farmer operating a 6,400 acre family
farm in the high plains of west Texas, producing cotton, grain sorghum,
and sunflowers. As a farmer who has long realized the value of digital
data systems--from the efficiencies of digital information capture and
data exchange to the productivity potential of data analysis--I began
to see the almost endless use cases for technology applications for my
operation and my partners' operations in the food & fiber supply chain.
In 2010, I began a conversation with my longtime friend and associate
Monty Edwards, a large crop insurance agent with deep generational
roots in agriculture, about how digital technologies could improve our
businesses, communications with partners, and ultimately, our quality
of life.
Through those conversations and additional investigation, we
determined a unified, digital agri-information system with certain
capabilities was needed to truly ``digitally transform'' farm operation
information. Ideally, this information system would be capable of: (1)
capturing and collecting significant farm operation data, (2)
organizing and normalizing that data into logical data sets; and (3)
sharing information, both from farmers to their trusted third parties
and from those third parties back to farmers (with farmers in control
of that sharing). At the time GiSC was formed in late 2012, the then
commercially available technology existed to create an information
system with these capabilities. However, at that time no such system,
or similar solution, had been adopted by growers on any scale.
Today, in 2017, that continues to remain the case. Farmers' data
related to their operations are stored in ``data silos.'' Some of that
data are stored in various ``clouds'', uploaded from technology
applications purchased by fa[r]mers or provided to them by various
vendors. Other data are stored locally in thumb drives and hard drives.
Yet even more data are recorded on paper, stored on farmers' pickup
truck dashboards and farm office desks and filing cabinets.
GiSC sprang from the conclusion that the ``disconnect'' between
current information collection and distribution practices and the
digital possibilities was (and continues to be) at least as much a
business organizational problem as a technology problem and involves
the relative value of farmers' data. Unlike the data captured and
communicated on typical technology/information platforms for consumers,
such as social media platforms, farm operation data is, in essence,
intellectual property--the farmer's trade secrets and ``know-how.''
Farmers are hesitant (and rightfully so) to entrust that data with
third parties in which those farmers have no vested interest.
Bridging this disconnect, for us, was to turn to an organizational
form U.S. growers have turned to for generations to solve shared
problems: farmer cooperatives. Granted, the vision of GiSC, as a data
cooperative, was a unique idea back in 2012 and, as far as I am aware,
remains a one-of-a-kind organization to this day. GiSC, as a
technology/business platform, provides its farmer-members what no other
platform can: real control over their Intellectual Property, their farm
operation data.
By offering a secure data platform service (an integrated system of
technology tools and applications) to its members, GiSC can provide the
obvious benefits of digitalization to an industry that finds itself
outpaced by most other industries in information technology adoption,
while at the same time protecting farmers' interest in their data. A
cooperative is owned by its members. Farmers, by owning the service
that provides the digital platform to capture, collect, and store
operational data, are afforded two valuable and distinct advantages:
Control--Through the data governance provided by GiSC (its
members and board of directors) and GiSC's primary value
proposition: growers own all the data that originates on their
operations or from their operations' activities.
Value--GiSC is uniquely positioned to return value back to
its farmer-members for their willingness to include their data
in the Coop's digital platform, whether in the form of
operational benchmarks and insights, advanced data analytics,
and/or member patronage.
GiSC Today: At a Glance
GiSC has grown from those initial conversations in 2010 and its
formation in 2012 to a nation-wide cooperative, with 1,400 forward
looking farmer-members from 41 states. GiSC has developed a vast
network of loyal supporters who share its vision. As an example, GiSC
has built a strong working relationship with the Agricultural Data
Coalition (ADC), a coalition of research universities, prominent grower
organizations and associations, equipment manufacturers, and regional
input/service providers. These entities came together in an effort to
help farmers better control and manage their data and to promote
innovation in the industry. GiSC and ADC continue to work together to
identify synergies and target opportunities for cooperation in areas in
which the two organizations share mutually aligned values.
The fact is many things have changed for GiSC since its inception
to today. However, GiSC's three key objectives, the Coop's cornerstone
and foundation, remain the same.
(1) Bring attention to farmers' vested interest in their farm
operation data and continue, with like-minded individuals
and organizations, to establish the precedent that growers
should (and must) own and control the data related to their
agricultural operations.
(2) Offer its farmer-members (and future members) a secure digital
platform that functions as a central repository for all of
the grower's operational data, while providing governance
of how that data is treated through the cooperative model.
(3) Return value back to its farmer-members as the digital platform
grows in both users and information.
GiSC has faced a myriad of challenges raising the capital necessary
to architect a robust digital platform, especially given the premise
that ownership of that platform resides with its members. In spite of
those challenges, GiSC stands on the precipice of bringing its vision
to reality. GiSC is working with Ag Simplicity, LLC to integrate GiSC's
licensed Authenticated Information Exchange platform with the
information technology applications Ag Simplicity is currently
developing. The integrated system, to be offered as AgSimpTM
through GiSC to its members, provides key components for a robust,
comprehensive digital platform solution. These components include:
A simple on-farm data collection solution that provides
real-time operational data capture with little effort or time
from farm operators;
A secure, cloud based Farm Information Management System
with the capabilities to:
Interface with other technology tools and services
utilized in a farm operation, collecting the data generated
from those tools and services;
Synchronize all data sources for the most complete
picture of an operation's activity; and
Organize growers' information geo-spatially, tagging
information to its related farms/fields; [and]
An agri-data exchange information and sharing platform that
facilitates the Coop's farmer-members sharing data with trusted
third parties, with member control over sharing capabilities.
The future vision for GiSC and the AgSimpTM platform
solution is to provide additional value back to its members through
data analysis as the wealth of information in the system grows.
The Future of Farming: The Opportunity of Digital Ag
From my experiences working with growers and industry leaders, I
would say there is much evidence that the clear majority of farmers are
not using data in any sort of systematic approach. This concept of
utilizing farm data as a real operational toolset has been used in a
million slide presentations to say that data-driven decision making is
the next ag revolution, and Ag 2.0 (Ag Tech) heading to Ag 3.0
(Internet of Things) will feed the ever-growing world with less arable
land. However, nobody has cracked this nut; the opportunity is the
grandest of visions, but it has not been proven at any scale.
Ultimately, these circumstances should encourage us, not deter us,
in the attempt to get a handle on this huge opportunity. Oh yes, the
opportunity is real to utilize data to decrease costs and increase the
efficiency of farming practices and make each field, the crop factory,
perform to its potential, and we should view the current state of
digital utilization on the farm as a blank slate: ripe for deploying
the most powerful, yet cost effective, technologies available.
The Future of Farming: The Challenges of Digital Ag
Adoption Issues
I want to take these few moments to cover the topic that I know
best: the practical use of agricultural technology in my operation
under ``in the field'' conditions. As a farm operator, I am in the
middle of the pack regarding ag technology adoption, putting me in a
similar position to most U.S. farmers in the market today. I am always
searching for morsels of value: actual uses of technology to solve real
problems in my operation. This is tough investigative work when the
industry is fixated on the buzzwords of ``big data'' and ``game
changing platforms''. The truth is ``you have to crawl before you
walk.'' For all the ``game changing platforms'' flooding the market,
there is not enough data captured in a useable format to create any
real and usable analytics in the industry at any scale, much less the
``big data'' answers. I think this is shocking to most people that are
not inside of the daily operations of a farm.
This is the dirty little secret in this data revolution: an actual
shot has not been fired and the adoption of the current data solutions
is at best defined as anemic. There has been a rash of ``soft-
adoption'' in the past 2 years as Ag Tech start-ups offered farmers
free chances to try the tools. Evidently however, farmers are for the
most part not attracted to ``cool tools'' or the latest fad. They don't
want any tool that takes more time to learn and use than the perceived
value any such tool garners. The second part of the problem is the huge
data gap from operating in equipment-centric solutions that capture
data with equipment, yet doesn't interact effectively with the
operator. The operator has many ``points of light'' in his little black
book, and these data points are often not captured in equipment-centric
solutions. For example, the seed variety and chemical cocktail used at
planting may never be entered to the controller. My guess is the most
widely planted variety of corn, as it is labeled in the controller, is
just ``CORN''.
There are a multitude of reasons why this data is not entered into
the controller. One of those reasons that should not be discounted is
the concern over who else is able to use that data if the data are
captured on a piece of equipment with telematics transferring that data
directly into a vendor's cloud. Last, the real problem is that growers
do not see the value in collecting this data, so they do not slow down
to put the needed information it in the controller. This is a classic
``the chicken or the egg'' problem because the value comes from
recommendations based on the analysis of good data. The data is not
fully collected and most data sets have tremendous gaps in the
necessary components to make them valuable without much post collection
operations.
I have people say to me that it is impossible to have farmers
purchase something they don't know they need. This is a challenge, but
I am hopeful that we will see the adoption by growers. There are a
couple anecdotes about Texas Instruments (TI) overcoming ``adoption''
challenges that I love. The first involved transistors. Pat Haggerty,
then CEO of TI, realized that if he could create a radio small enough
that it be carried on a person, these small radios would become a fad,
developing a dynamic market for the transistor radio. He was right, but
it was not just size: creating demand for the product meant getting the
price point right too. A decade later Pat Haggerty challenged Jack
Kilby, a TI lead engineer, to create a market for microchips by using
them in ``pocket'' calculators. Pat wanted them small enough to fit in
a shirt pocket and cheap enough to buy on impulse. The rest is history:
people, who had previously not realized they needed or wanted such a
product, began to buy the calculators. Turns out, almost everyone had a
need, and was willing to pay, for the convenience of on the spot
addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. These markets were
born out of TI's innovative approach. Not only its approach to
technological innovation, but also, and maybe more importantly, its
marketing innovations.
We are at a similar place in the ag tech sector. There are obvious
adoption challenges to overcome, but the answers are in sight. Solving
the adoption dilemma is going to be defined by a product or set of
products that solve real farm problems, especially problems which are
either time consuming or expensive to solve today, and, much like the
TI examples, the solutions must be packaged to attract grower's
attention and their price points must be fair and reasonable in the
grower's eyes. Second, as emphasized above, farm operation data is
actually intellectual property and the grower must feel that the
service provider has not overstepped in the use of the farmer's data
nor violated his privacy rights. The challenges are daunting but I see
a bright future for innovation that keeps in mind the value and the
trust needed to handle the grower's data.
Time Factors
The challenges that make data collection in agriculture such a
difficult task is just the nature of the process. Data collection, if
it is done well, is a time-consuming task that must be carried out
systematically, but farmers are under constantly changing pressures:
prioritizing, and then re-prioritizing the work for the day. Farming is
a highly time sensitive occupation. If you were to ask me what
differentiates the most profitable farmers from the least profitable
farmers, I would say the differentiator is not any one farmer's land,
equipment, education, or even technology. The most critical element to
thriving in a farming business is ``timing''.
Timing is everything, and it makes farming a race from start to
finish. Timing in land preparation, seeding, fertilization placement,
insecticide application, tillage, herbicide application, harvest, and
marketing separates farmers into categories of failing, simply
surviving, or thriving. Farming is a never-ending battle with the
forces of nature and markets, and performing and making decision within
these timing windows is difficult. External events outside the grower's
control, such as weather, can at times humble the very best farm
managers. This year, for me is just such an example: the cotton growing
regions around Lubbock have been the most challenging in my 35 year
career. Technology has helped me to compensate for the challenging
year, but its benefits cannot overcome the forces beyond my control:
hail, blowing sand, and other adverse conditions. However, it can help
me analyze and diagnose my current situation and help me decide the
most opportune direction to move to salvage the year.
The point is a farmer is deciding at any given moment what activity
will make the biggest difference, when the year is over, to the bottom
line. Effective data analysis from effective data collection will make
a difference, but, for farmers, questions remain. Will it make as big a
difference as getting this field harvested before an approaching storm
system blows down my grain as it is ready to be harvested? Will it make
a difference if the approaching rains ``string out'' my beautiful white
field of cotton and lower the quality and then the price? These sort of
situations is how gaps in data collection happen and this is one reason
why farmers are not going to commit to time-consuming and costly
processes, platforms, or services. We are looking for the ``biggest
bang for the buck'' in both real dollars and time invested in the
process.
However, I always am reminded of a recent statement of Jeremy
Wilson, Technology Specialist at Crop IMS: ``At the end of the day you
only get one chance to collect data accurately and if you miss it when
that machine goes through the field, you cannot get it back.'' Jeremy
is a good friend and a great proponent of precision ag. I know he is
right. I also know if we don't collect harvest data in 2017, then the
next chance we will have to collect harvest data is another year away.
A farmer is going to need to see the real, useable value that can be
garnered from this collected data for him to slow down any and do the
necessary data collection, accurately and in real-time.
Ag Tech Hype
One of the most significant challenges that is yet to be overcome
by any single technology, or integrated technologies, in today's ag
tech world is to create a product that: (1) solves a myriad of real
pain points in agriculture, and (2) does so at a price point and time
utilization metric that is attractive to growers. Both factors are
needed to create value. Farmers are hopeful and are waiting, but the
reality has not matched the hype. Technology companies, for the most
part, have over promised what their ``game changing platform'' will do
for the grower. Farmers, as a result, have become extremely skeptical
about technology and how to incorporate it in their operations. I love
a term used by Jason Tatge, CEO of Farmobile. He calls it ``Ag-Tech
Fatigue''. Farmers have tried to see the value in the products offered,
but the promises were over blown and using these products often became
a leach on the grower's time. In many cases, even if the time consumed
to use the product were not excessive, the actual cost of the product
would be out of line with a farmer's expectation once the trial period
was complete. Last, given the amount of time and money are acceptable,
the grower may still be uncomfortable with using the product. That
discomfort stems from questions regarding who owns the data collected
and what rights technology providers have to use the data. At the end
of the day this is the value proposition I am trying to find: I want to
pay a fair and reasonable price for a product that delivers real
information for making decisions on my farm in a timely manner and
without the fear of my data being used by others without my express
permission or in a way that may be ultimately detrimental to my farm or
my neighbor's farms.
Ownership Concerns
GiSC is trying to understand this complex world of data and its
use. The issue is complicated, and one problem is that one size does
not fit all. Deciding on a piece of data collecting equipment, based on
its capabilities and features, is challenging enough, much less without
the challenge involved in understanding the legalese. The fine print in
an end-user license agreement (EULA) regarding my data is very complex.
The various EULAs used in the market are so different and diverse that
I could not even do justice to the discussion. In some instances, I own
the raw data until it is on the provider's servers, but then once the
data is stored on those servers, it becomes the provider's data. The
provider, in many cases, will promise to never disclose my identity via
a process known as anonymization. In many cases these EULAs will
include phrases such as: ``the grower grants (the service provider) a
perpetual worldwide license to the use of any data stored in the
system.''
GiSC is trying to understand what all this means. Let me be plain
when I say that we may need to decide if we, as growers, can accept
these EULAs, and the treatment of our data under them, as they are
typically structured today. I have tried to hold to an altruist view of
what a farmer's rights are in respect to data, but we may need to
further investigate if there is potential value by coming to a new
conclusion. GiSC and its grower members must decide the data model that
brings the most value to the grower's bottom line and is the least
disruptive to our world and our trusted partners.
Disruption Concerns
Another challenge facing farmers and the ag tech space are the new
players with little understanding of the grower's ecosystem and his
network of advisors. An often overused term among technology startups
is industry disruption. Technology focused magazines and journals are
filled with examples of new companies with game changing platforms that
are destined to disrupt entire industries. Disruption is a common theme
in tech start-up pitch decks shown to investors as the start-ups seek
funding. In the ag tech space, claims such as this or that start-up is
going to be the ``Amazon of Agriculture''. This sounds great to
investors, but in truth, most great ideas did not uproot an industry to
gain a foot hold. The ``old guard'' are not the farmer's enemies; they
are his support system: the seed dealer, fertilizer dealer, crop
insurance agent, banker, equipment salesman, agronomist, entomologist,
et cetera. This list represents people that the farmer knows on a
personal level and contribute to farm's profitability. When problems
arise on the farm, farmers can call their agronomist at 10 p.m. or 6
a.m., and he will take their call. Farmers, and the businesses that
serve them, are intertwined in a sonnet to produce a crop in a timely
manner and at a cost that has them back next year to make new purchases
from the vendor. Therefore, we must be cautious when we make blanket,
reflexive statements, calling disruption ``good''. Peter Thiel, PayPal
founder and venture capitalist offers this advice in his book ``Zero to
One'':
``Silicon Valley has become obsessed with `disruption.'
Originally, `disruption' was a term of art to describe how a
firm can use new technology to introduce a low-end product at
low prices, improve the product over time, and eventually
overtake even the premium products offered by incumbent
companies using older technology . . . . However, disruption
has recently transmogrified into a self-congratulatory buzzword
for anything posing as trendy and new . . . . But if you truly
want to make something new, the act of creation is far more
important than the old industries that might not like what you
create. Indeed, if your company can be summed up by its
opposition to already existing firms, it can't be completely
new . . . .''
Industry Fears
I am borrowing this often-said phrase from others because it is
true: ``Ag is a small room, but I would not want to paint it.'' I
proceed with caution here, even though a part of me would like to hit
``reset'' and start over with ag digital technology, including data
creation, data collection, data storage, and data analyzation. GiSC has
tried to work closely with crop protection companies, input providers,
and others with growers as customers, growers who would benefit from
utilizing their data and aggregated data, improving those operations
through benchmarking and other analytical tools.
I have frankly been confounded by the fact that many, if not most,
of these trusted partners of growers are not very open to the idea of
their customers integrating the data captured and created via services
offered by those trusted partners with other data related to the
grower's operation, much less integrating that data in anonymized,
aggregated data sets of multiple growers. In fact, many such services
require the data captured/created from the service be stored within the
service provider's system and only be utilized with the particular
service provider's tools. The Ag Tech world is littered with those that
live in fear of what a farmer might be able to do with better data.
Therefore, most try to create a stand-alone data ecosystem, in which
the farmer's data is stored for post-season analysis and creating next
year's recommendations. This creates the ``data silos'' mentioned
earlier. That data is never benchmarked against anything, and
therefore, the potentially most significant value of such data derived
from groups of farmers working together never materializes. In my
opinion, if current farm groups don't find a way to move beyond this
fear, then Silicon Valley will eventually have a heyday in the ag
world, and the disruptions I cautioned against above, will become
reality.
Rural Broadband and Connectivity
The last challenge I need to mention involves the continuing need
to address the inadequate communications infrastructure in rural areas.
While population continues to become more concentrated in the most
urban, populated areas, the simple fact remains that those populations'
food and fiber continue to be supplied by farms in rural America. The
dirt cannot move to town, and we need the means to move the data
captured, created, and collected on the farm to ``clouds'', where the
proper analysis can be performed. The rural communications initiatives
in the U.S. need to be strengthened if we are going to be part of
feeding the world.
I would encourage Congress to continue, and even increase, support
of FCC's initiatives including Connect America Fund and Mobility Fund.
I understand that serving rural areas requires higher costs, but those
costs pale in comparison to the cost of failing to assure adequate
communications in rural areas, the price of which is the inability to
meet the objective of feeding the world. The current trajectory of
total-factor productivity gains in agriculture is inadequate to fill
the gap between food production capacity and demand. According to
knowledgeable sources, the current gap implies starvation of at least
500M people by 2050, an alarming and totally unacceptable figure.
Precision Agriculture advances and other technologies are required to
fill that gap, but without new generations of fixed and mobile
communications services in the rural areas that produce that food,
those productivity gains will not be possible. We must have fast
broadband available in rural homes and offices and wireless broadband
at the field level with the capability of moving information to and
from the cloud for processing, analytics and better decision making.
There is great potential for innovation and entrepreneurship in
rural America (Ag and other) but it requires fast Internet connections
and 4G wireless services--the same tools that nourish entrepreneurship
in metro areas. I make a plea that we cannot afford to deny our
potential entrepreneurs and farmers the tools required to assure the
maximum contribution to our economy.
Challenges of Digital Ag--Rabobank Summary
I would like to conclude addressing the challenges of digital ag
with a profound synopsis of the issue made by Rabobank Senior Research
Analyst Kenneth Zuckerberg. In May 2017 Rabobank's RaboResearch issued
a report titled ``Bungle in the Ag Tech Jungle, Cracking the Code on
Precision Farming and Digital Agriculture.'' The full report is
attached as an addendum to this written testimony with the permission
of Rabobank Mr. Zuckerberg's summary is as follows:
``Agriculture has, over the course of its history, embraced
new technologies that improve productivity. 'Digital
agriculture' represents the latest wave of sector innovation--
and while it offers many promising new technologies, farmer
adoption has remained quite modest. The consensus view is that
growers will not invest in new/unproven technologies during a
cyclical downturn, but there seems to be a bigger limiting
factor at work here. This nascent industry has been trying to
attract customers before the ecosystem has been properly
constructed. What we believe is missing is a standardized way
to gather and interpret data, and then translate actionable
insights to commercial users--insights which then, in turn, can
deliver value to growers. We believe that a standardized system
is necessary to drive farmer adoption of digital agriculture
serv-
ices . . . Yet without a common data platform and operating
system, it is unlikely that growers, or the vendors providing
precision farming services, will fully capture the value
associated with digital agriculture.''
The Future of Farming: Innovation and Excitement
I can complain every day about all the things that are wrong in the
space, but that does not create what I need in my farm operation. The
point is that even with problems that seem at times overwhelming, there
are nuggets of gold; I find these nuggets all the time as I meet
passionate founders of ag tech companies, pioneers who are trying to
make a difference. They certainly are capitalist: they want to bring
value to the grower and get paid for the value. I am also encouraged by
ag groups such as AgGateway and the Open Ag Data Alliance (OADA) who
are working to overcome the digital challenges growers face, and am
especially encouraged as the ADC and GiSC continue working on behalf of
the grower as a vanguard, allowing growers to focus on what they do
best--producing a crop.
Innovation is the engine of ever increasing agricultural
productivity. As the founder of GiSC, I have the pleasure of seeing
innovation happen in exciting new places. On my operation, I have
tested many innovative products such as Farmobile's Passive Uplink
Connection (PUC), which lets you collect data and seamlessly move it to
a cloud regardless of the color of your equipment. For instance, just
last week at my farm Blue River Technology tested its ``See & Spray''
technology, which utilizes computer vision and artificial intelligence
to treat weed problems in the field. I see innovation from major
technology companies. IBM, as an example, is recruiting and employing
highly competent people with expertise in the agriculture industry and
has developed powerful weather analytics that can be integrated into
digital platforms. Major cellular service providers are also working on
applications that leverage their networks to deliver digital tools to
growers.
Last, without a doubt, innovation is about to take ``front and
center'' stage around the Internet of Things (IoT), as data collection
in ag becomes almost automatic. The handheld computer we all carry
around, the smartphone, enabled by IoT sensors on the farm, will
provide a leap in the data acquisition landscape. The day of a farmer
spending a couple of hours at the end of the day entering data will be
a thing of the past; data capture and acquisition will just ``happen''
as we go about our daily business as farm operators. I am thankful to
be seeing the beginning of Ag 3.0, and I would suggest you all stay
tuned, because ``you ain't seen nothing yet''.
Last Words
Somewhere, somehow, in this complex vast world of data utilization,
an ecosystem will get built that will overcome the digital ag
challenges: the value challenge, the time/resource constraints, and the
trepidations of both growers and their trusted partners. Ultimately,
this digital ecosystem must be grower-centric and provide for the
exchange of information and knowledge, a world where information is not
in ``data silos'' but is available to growers and growers' trusted
advisors.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you about a topic that I
am very passionate. I believe unless we, as farmers, have ``stock'' in
the data we create, in the next decade our world will completely
change, or be lost completely. GiSC is a proponent Section 1619 of the
2008 Farm Bill. We are not asking you to make it easier for others to
access our USDA information. We appreciate that you understand that
there is a right to privacy in our farm locations and our CLUs.
Therefore, it would be beneficial to continue to guard the CLU (Common
Land Unit) to protect the privacy of America's farmers. Please continue
to be supportive of more digital solutions at FSA/RMA, including
automating data delivery from USDA to the grower. GiSC is a willing
partner in the task, and we will continue to work hand in glove with
FSA to try and understand how to keep the grower in control of this
digital world. Last, thank you for all the hard work you do for the
American Farmer.
Addendum
RaboResearch
Bungle in the Ag Tech Jungle: Cracking the Code on Precision Farming
and Digital Agriculture
May 2017
Summary
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
RaboResearch, Food & Agribusiness, far.rabobank.com. Kenneth S.
Zuckerberg, Senior Research Analyst, +1 212 916 7998; Dirk Jan Kennes,
Global Sector Strategist, +852 21032423.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Agriculture has, over the course of its history, embraced new
technologies that improve productivity. `Digital agriculture'
represents the latest wave of sector innovation--and while it offers
many promising new technologies, farmer adoption has remained quite
modest. The consensus view is that growers will not invest in new/
unproven technologies during a cyclical downturn, but there seems to be
a bigger limiting factor at work here. This nascent industry has been
trying to attract customers before the ecosystem has been properly
constructed. What we believe is missing is a standardized way to gather
and interpret data, and then translate actionable insights to
commercial users--insights which then, in turn, can deliver value to
growers. We believe that a standardized system is necessary to drive
farmer adoption of digital agriculture services--and within this
report, we offer our take on how digital agriculture can add value to
production agriculture. Yet without a common data platform and
operating system, it is unlikely that growers, or the vendors providing
precision farming services, will fully capture the value associated
with digital agriculture.
Agricultural Innovation
The Four Waves
The complex process of crop and livestock farming has evolved over
the course of thousands of years, and digital agriculture is simply the
latest wave of innovation. Advances in farming have historically
followed the growth and prosperity of civilization, with mechanization
playing an especially prominent role throughout history. The invention
of the horse-drawn seed drill in 1700 by Englishman Jethro Tull was
notable in that it allowed farmers to plant crops in rows more
efficiently than could be done by hand.
Several other useful farm machinery innovations came after the seed
drill, namely the cotton gin, reaper/binder, combined harvester-
thresher, and gasoline-powered tractor. Collectively, these advances in
machine technology fall into a category that we call the first wave of
agricultural innovation.
A second wave began in the 1940s, as chemicals used during the war
years were repurposed for use in production agriculture. The associated
yield benefits of applying nitrogen fertilizer and pesticides
incentivized many U.S. farmers to focus on growing few types of crops,
but on a much larger scale, abandoning the tradition of farming both
crops and livestock. This wave also marked the birth of new farming
practices--termed the `green revolution'--that helped improve crop
productivity through more effective usage of synthetic fertilizers and
crop production chemicals, as well as field irrigation.
A third innovation wave started in the 1980s and 1990s, a period
considered to be the birth of `precision farming,' a precise
sustainability-oriented approach to farming that sought to produce more
with fewer inputs and lower environmental impact. The third wave also
included gains in plant breeding through genetic engineering and
controlled pollination, genetics-based animal breeding, the use of
global positioning systems (GPS) on tractors, as well as remote sensing
technologies utilizing satellites, drones, and other UAVs.
Digital agriculture is the fourth, and latest, wave of agricultural
innovation--and one that has been largely funded by venture capital
(VC) investors, along with the VC units of several major F&A and
equipment companies. Since the beginning of 2014, over USD $6.5bn of
capital has been invested in new precision farming and data-oriented
technologies seeking to modernize farming for the digital age. These
technologies have taken many shapes, forms, and sizes. These range from
cloud-based software tools to hybrid hardware/software products that
are 'smart' in that they can communicate with other connected devices
wirelessly and digitally, with minimal human intervention.
Table 1: The Four Waves of Agricultural Innovation
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wave Description
------------------------------------------------------------------------
First wave Mechanization (seed drill, cotton gin,
reaper/binder, combined harvester-
thresher, tractor)
Second wave Ag chemistry (nitrogen fertilizer,
pesticides)
Third wave Precision farming (biology, plant and
animal genetics, GPS)
Fourth wave Digital agriculture (smart hardware,
analysis of temporal layers of
spatial data, weather, and remote
sensing to evaluate crop conditions)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, USDA,
Rabobank 2017.
Another dimension of smart farming involves algorithms, artificial
intelligence (AI), and machine learning, which, in essence, combines
mathematics, data analytics, and predictive modeling to produce
customized recommendations designed to help growers farm more
efficiently, sustainably, and profitably.
Figure 1: Investments in Ag Technology (excluding food e-commerce), Q1
2014-Q4 2016
Source: AgFunder AgTech Investing Report (Year in Review
2016) 2017.
These customized recommendations are intended to be precise and
prescriptive (building upon the original tenants of precision farming)
in that they provide specific advice for managing critical tasks that
occur throughout the growing/production season. For crop farmers, the
prescriptions conceptually include instructions on what to plant, where
and when to plant, what to apply to the soil and the plant (in the form
of water, nutrients, and crop protection chemicals), how to most
efficiently apply those inputs (e.g., on a variable rate basis), and
when to harvest. For dairy and livestock farmers, the prescriptions
offer direct guidance on when to feed the animal, provide vitamins and/
or medicine, guidance on when to milk and/or when to slaughter, and
other herd management matters.
The Promised Value
Digital agriculture offers the promise of greater income and lower
volatility, utilizing data, mathematics, and logic to add value to farm
decisions by removing human emotion and bias. In crop farming, the
`promised value' for growers consists of optimal financial risk-
adjusted returns on the capital used to farm. The idea here being that
improved agronomic practices, coupled with more precise field decisions
(e.g., the timing and type of nutrient applications) tailored to local
field and intra-field conditions, can create the promised value through
higher crop yields and lower input costs (for example, lower and more
precise nutrient and ag chemical applications), as well as operational
efficiencies and time management (automatic, rather than manual
collection of helpful data to drive decisions can allow farmers to
complete tasks which cannot be automated). Another consideration is
better grain quality and consistency, which results in additional value
to midstream and downstream buyers.
Below is a partial list of precision and digital technologies
currently in use in the global farming community.
Table 2: Leading Precision and Digital Technologies
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Auto-steering and guidance systems Remote sensing (drones, UAVs)
Farm data management software Satellite imagery (high-resolution)
Crop sensing/measurement Variable rate technologies
Global positioning systems (GPS) Yield monitors
Milking robots Yield maps
Precision irrigation & water usage Wireless weather stations
monitoring
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Rabobank 2017
Barriers to Adoption
Despite the strong conceptual foundation for using data-intensive
tools in agriculture, farmer adoption has been quite low. While there
are numerous reasons for this, we highlight five reasons that have been
validated in our field research over the past 3 years with growers and
data scientists:
First, many new software technologies lack a clearly
articulated value proposition and, in fact, are not `proven' in
terms of demonstrating a calculated return or payback on
investment. This contrasts with the situation that occurs when
new seed technologies come to market, a process in which field
trials over multiple growing seasons culminate in a proof of
concept, helping to ensure customer trust and subsequent
product adoption. Furthermore, we have observed that certain
start-up companies and investors have an imperfect
understanding of telemetry, artificial intelligence (AI), and
data analytics. For example, just because a piece of equipment
used in farming is smart--it can collect data and transmit
data--such data must be further analyzed before it can be
translated into an actionable insight.
Second, many farms actually lack the necessary technological
infrastructure (enterprise-grade business computing networks,
with proper/secure cloud storage and backup), beyond the
missing proof of concept, required to interact digitally with
industry farm management software systems offered by vendors
such as Conservis, Farmers Business Network, Granular, or SST.
Trying to get farmers to purchase both IT hardware and software
is hard enough in a favorable commodity price environment, as
farmers are typically resistant to change, given the `family
tradition' and experience-based nature of farming. Trying to do
this during a downturn in the crop cycle (which the industry
has been experiencing since commodity prices and farmer income
peaked in 2012/13) is, and has been, nearly impossible.
Third, selling software as a service (SaaS) to financially
strapped farm customers has been a very difficult revenue
generation strategy, given these dynamics. Perhaps a better
strategy could be to provide growers basic software without
charge, to encourage use and adoption, while selling premium
add-on products and services to independent agronomists and
crop consultants who advise the growers.
Fourth, data ownership and privacy has been a heated, widely
debated topic ever since big data entered the global farming
conversation. The matter is actually part of a larger consumer
privacy conversation involving medical records, web browsing
activities, and the resale of consumer data for use in
marketing. An innovative idea to ensure greater privacy is
creation of a farmer not-for-profit data cooperative, owned or
operated by growers or by an unbiased third party such as an
agricultural university. The industry has already seen examples
of these ideas in the form of Grower Information Services
Cooperative (GiSC) and Ohio State University's Agricultural
Data Corporative in the United States. Similar ideas have
gained traction in Europe, especially the Netherlands, among
both farmer cooperatives, as well as other groups, with a
notable example being the Farm-Oriented Open Data in Europe
(FOODIE) project in Spain, the Czech Republic, and Germany.
Fifth, digital agriculture lacks a universal operating
platform in which to connect the entire ecosystem. At present,
digital farming lacks a standardized operating system and/or
data platform in which the value chain can upload, store,
validate, refine, cleanse, and analyze data and in which
relevant stakeholders can easily communicate with each other.
Based on our research interviews with data scientists from
various enterprise software and business analytics firms--
including EMC, IBM, and Verisk--we believe that a data
warehouse and data analytics structure (which connects all
stakeholders: farmers, software vendors, equipment
manufacturers, and data analytics companies, and can enable
data sharing) is critical for digital agriculture to add value.
A Framework for Adding Value
Creation of a universal data platform is critical. However, going
from the `concept' stage to the `blueprint' stage is a complicated
exercise. How this happens and who pays for it will depend on which
party/parties take leadership in organizing and aligning the industry,
and how much capital is set aside for building, testing, and
maintaining required systems. Although it took 2 decades for electronic
commerce to evolve after Internet access became available to the
general public, we would expect creation of the necessary platforms for
digital agriculture to occur much faster.
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Source: CEMA 2007.
Concluding Thoughts
Digital agriculture represents the newest--and perhaps the most
promising--wave of industry innovation that, in our opinion, can help
production agriculture operate more efficiently and sustainably, both
in terms of long-term financial success and continued environmental
stewardship.
While this report approaches the subject of digital agriculture
largely from the perspective of upstream farming (crop and livestock)
and farm inputs (seeds, crop protection chemicals, fertilizer, and
machinery) companies, a common operating system for data gathering,
collaboration, and analytics is of critical importance to other players
along the value chain.
Midstream food companies and their supply chains (such as
processors, storage, and transportation companies) are increasingly
demanding more data and information. This is largely driven by the end-
consumer who demands greater transparency about the origin of
commercially sold food. In our opinion, consumer sentiment and
regulations governing the interest of consumers will ultimately guide
the further evolution and adoption of digital agriculture.
Imprint
RaboResearch
Food & Agribusiness, far.rabobank.com.
Kenneth S. Zuckerberg, Senior Research Analyst,
[email protected], +1 212 916 7998.
Dirk Jan Kennes, Global Sector Strategist,
[email protected], +852 21032423.
2017--All rights reserved.
This document is meant exclusively for you and does not carry any
right of publication or disclosure other than to Cooperative Rabobank
U.A. (``Rabobank''), registered in Amsterdam. Neither this document nor
any of its contents may be distributed, reproduced, or used for any
other purpose without the prior written consent of Rabobank. The
information in this document reflects prevailing market conditions and
our judgement as of this date, all of which may be subject to change.
This document is based on public information. The information and
opinions contained in this document have been compiled or derived from
sources believed to be reliable; however, Rabobank does not guarantee
the correctness or completeness of this document, and does not accept
any liability in this respect. The information and opinions contained
in this document are indicative and for discussion purposes only. No
rights may be derived from any potential offers, transactions,
commercial ideas, et cetera contained in this document. This document
does not constitute an offer, invitation, or recommendation. This
document shall not form the basis of, or cannot be relied upon in
connection with, any contract or commitment whatsoever. The information
in this document is not intended, and may not be understood, as an
advice (including, without limitation, an advice within the meaning of
article 1:1 and article 4:23 of the Dutch Financial Supervision Act).
This document is governed by Dutch law. The competent court in
Amsterdam, the Netherlands has exclusive jurisdiction to settle any
dispute which may arise out of, or in connection with, this document
and/or any discussions or negotiations based on it. This report has
been published in line with Rabobank's long-term commitment to
international food and agribusiness. It is one of a series of
publications undertaken by the global department of RaboResearch Food &
Agribusiness.
The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Tiller. Very well said.
Mr. Janzen, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF TODD J. JANZEN, J.D., PRESIDENT, JANZEN
AGRICULTURAL LAW LLC, INDIANAPOLIS, IN
Mr. Janzen. Good morning, Chairman Crawford, Ranking Member
Nolan, and Members of the Subcommittee. My name is Todd Janzen.
I am President and attorney of Janzen Agricultural Law LLC,
which is a law firm based in Indianapolis, Indiana. And we
serve the needs of farmers, agribusiness, and also ag
technology providers.
You are going to hear a lot today about agricultural data
and this movement of data from on-farm into cloud-based
platforms. Yield data is a good example of that. In the past,
farmers always kept this data on their farms, and now we are
seeing a real movement towards moving that into third-party
platform providers that host this data somewhere else.
And together with this movement of data off the farm into
the possession of third parties have come a lot of concerns.
And groups like American Farm Bureau Federation have taken
numerous polls about how farmers feel about this. And in my
materials, I have more detail, but I would summarize it by
saying there are really three concerns that I see. First, is a
lack of trust among farmers in these ag technology providers,
because they are giving up part of what makes up their
livelihood. Second, is a loss of control to these companies.
And third, would be frustrations with the complexity of the
legal agreements they are asked to sign.
And, of course, farmers are no strangers to contracts. They
sign things all the time. But now they are being asked to check
an ``I accept'' box that has some pretty important consequences
for what happens to their data, followed by pages and pages of
legal type that they may or may not read.
American Farm Bureau Federation really led an effort a few
years ago to come up with some ground rules for how companies
should use and control ag data, and this culminated in a
document called the Privacy and Security Principles for Farm
Data, which I refer to as the Core Principles for farm data.
And 37 companies signed onto these and said they were going to
implement these core principles in their contracts with
farmers. I was fortunate to be involved in those discussions
and be part of that as that document came to be.
But just creating Core Principles isn't really enough,
because if companies don't follow these Core Principles, we
need some way to verify that. And so that is one of the things
I want to talk about today.
Farm Bureau, National Farmers Union, and commodity groups
for corn, soy, wheat, soybeans, sorghum, and potatoes all came
together and formed an organization that could help verify
whether or not companies were being transparent with farmers'
data. And what they came up with was a way to recognize those
companies after going through a certification process. And this
is the seal of approval that this organization provides to
companies that says Ag Data Transparent. And a company that
goes through a certification process can obtain use of that on
their marketing materials.
The seal really recognizes companies that have been through
a certification process. And in order to get the seal, ten
questions are asked of these companies, such as what data are
you collecting from farmers, how are you using that data, and
then can a farmer retrieve that data back from this company at
a later date if they want to.
My role at Janzen Agricultural Law is to administer this
project, and that is one reason I am here today. We review
these companies' submissions when they fill out these ten
question forms, and we check to see are they really being
transparent with how they use farmers' ag data.
I am proud to say that eight companies have already been
through this certification process and been awarded the Ag Data
Transparent seal. In fact, MyAgData, Deb Casurella's company,
was the very first one to obtain use of the seal. But there are
still many more that could go through and become certified, and
we hope that they do.
We also post the answers to these ten questions when
companies go through the process online at
agdatatransparent.com, and in my materials I have a lot more
detail about that.
I will just conclude by saying there is still a lot of work
to be done here. There are still a lot of companies that should
go through the certification process but haven't as of today.
There are still a lot of complex, complicated contracts that
farmers are asked to sign, and we can do better as a legal
community to address that as well.
I hope that when different companies come before you as a
Committee you will ask them, do you have the Ag Data
Transparent seal? Or if companies have been through the
process, you will congratulate them for achieving that.
I am honored to speak with you here today about this effort
and the work that I do, and I welcome your questions later
today. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Janzen follows:]
Prepared Statement of Todd J. Janzen, J.D., President, Janzen
Agricultural Law LLC, Indianapolis, IN
Good morning, Chairman Crawford, Ranking Member Nolan, and Members
of Subcommittee. My name is Todd J. Janzen, I am the President and
attorney with Janzen Agricultural Law, LLC, a law firm based in
Indianapolis, Indiana that serves the needs of America's farmers, ag
technology providers, and agribusinesses.
One of the reasons we founded Janzen Ag Law in 2015 was that we
wanted to be at the forefront of the changes that have been occurring
on the farm for the past few years. Farms are becoming more digital
every day, and together with that digitalization is a movement of
agricultural data stored on computers in the farm office to cloud-based
data storage devices. Agricultural data (ag data) can be many things,
including yield data, soil data, planting information, weather data,
financial data, etc. This marks the first time in history that the
majority of the information that farmers generate and use on their
farms has been moved into the hands of companies outside the farm.
As a result, we are seeing a digital land-rush occurring across the
United States. The past few years have seen millions of dollars pour
into ag data startups from Silicon Valley to Kansas City. Historic
legacy agricultural companies, such as John Deere, are also at the
forefront of this movement by expanding their product offerings to
include cloud-based data storage platforms. All of these companies are
scrambling to get the most acres of data into their platforms so that
when consolidation of ag technology providers (ATPs) begins, they are
in the strongest position.
In the race to the cloud, we must also be cautious so that the
American farmer is not left behind. Today I will address the issues
facing farmers as digitalization occurs and how the industry has begun
to address these issues.
Issues Facing Farmers as Ag Data Moves into the Cloud
American Farm Bureau Federation (Farm Bureau) conducted a poll of
over 400 farmers in 2016 to understand their issues concerning ag data
privacy, security, and control. The poll highlighted what are
essentially three issues that continue to come up when asking farmers
about ag data concerns:
1. Lack of Trust
Seventy-seven percent (77%) of farmers expressed concern about
which entities can access their farm data after the data is uploaded to
cloud-based servers. The same percentage expressed concern about
whether uploading the data could cause it to be used for regulatory
purposes.
Sixty-seven percent (67%) of farmers said they consider how outside
parties will use their ag data when deciding whether to entrust their
data with a certain ATP.
A farmer's lack of trust can come from many sources, but I
speculate it originates in two places. Many ag data companies are new.
Ag data startups lack the goodwill that older agricultural companies
have spent years building. They have new sales associates who are
strangers to the farm, or in some instances, strangers to agriculture.
They are viewed as outsiders.
Older, long-established agricultural companies do not suffer from a
general lack of trust with the farmer, since they have spent years
building that relationship. But when a seed company, equipment
manufacturer, or ag retailer begins offering an ag data platform to
store the farmer's ag data, farmers often are skeptical about whether
the storage provider is trying to help the farmer raise a better crop
or using the ag data to sell the farmer more or higher-priced goods and
services. This skepticism may erode a farmer's trust.
2. Concern with Losing Control
Farmers are also concerned that uploading their ag data to cloud-
based platforms means they will lose control over downstream uses.
Sixty-six percent (66%) of respondents in the Farm Bureau poll believe
farmers should share in the potential financial benefits from the use
of their data beyond the direct value they may realize on their farm.
Farmers raised concerns that ATPs could use their ag data to gain
an unfair advantage in the marketplace. Sixty-one percent (61%) of
farmers expressed worry that ATPs could use their data to influence
market decisions.
These concerns arise from a fundamental legal truth about ag data--
there are no laws that specifically protect farmers' privacy and
security concerns. Ag data is not typically ``personally identifiable
information,'' such that it would be protected by state laws which
prevent misuse of personal information like name, address, and phone
number. Nor does ag data fit into a class of data that Congress has
chosen to protect legally, such as medical information (HIPAA).
Finally, ag data does not neatly fit into existing legal protections
for intellectual property, such as patents, trademarks, or copyrights.
Ag data ultimately may be deemed a trade secret under existing state
and Federal trade secret laws, but that will depend upon whether courts
interpret existing statutes to include information such as agronomic
data.
These uncertainties mean that the contracts between farmers and ag
tech providers are very important. These contracts will determine
farmers' rights in the ag data their farms create.
3. Frustration with Complexity of Current Legal Agreements
Fifty-nine (59%) percent of farmers were confused about whether
current legal agreements allowed ATPs to use their ag data to market
other services, equipment, or inputs back to them. Zippy Duvall,
President of Farm Bureau, said: ``This indicates a higher level of
clarity and transparency is needed to secure grower confidence. One of
the topics I hear most about from farmers on the data issue is having a
clear understanding about the details of `Terms and Conditions' and
`Privacy Policy' documents we all sign when buying new electronics. You
should not have to hire an attorney before you are comfortable signing
a contract with an ag technology provider.''
Our experience as a law firm working in this area confirms that
this is a real problem for farmers and ATPs. There is no standard
agreement that governs ag data transfer, use, and control by ATPs.
Instead, technology companies have adapted other forms of legal
agreements to try to address the issues associated with moving ag data
into cloud-based platforms, but with limited success. A farmer seeking
to compare two similar products today might find that they are governed
by two very different sets of contracts.
This only adds to a farmer's confusion. If we want to make
technology easy to embrace and use--and we do--then we need to simplify
the contracts farmers sign when implementing new ag data technology on
the farm.
How the Industry Is Addressing Farmers' Concerns
1. The Privacy and Security Principles for Farm Data
Farm Bureau, National Farmer's Union, and national commodity
organizations for corn, soybeans, wheat, and sorghum, led an effort in
2014 to establish fundamental principles for companies working in the
ag data space. These organizations held a series of meetings where
roundtable discussions occurred among industry stakeholders, such as
John Deere, CNH Industrial, AGCO, Monsanto, DuPont Pioneer, Beck's
Hybrids, Dow Agrosciences, Farmobile, and other ag technology
providers. The culmination of these efforts was the drafting of the
``Privacy and Security Principles for Farm Data,'' also known as ag
data's ``Core Principles.''
The Core Principles address thirteen key elements related to ag
data. These include:
Education.
Ownership.
Collection, Access and Control.
Notice.
Transparency and Consistency.
Choice.
Portability.
Terms and Definitions.
Disclosure, Use, and Sale Limitation.
Data Retention and Availability.
Contract Termination.
Unlawful or Anti-Competitive Activities.
Liability & Security Safeguards.
After releasing the Core Principles in 2014, Farm Bureau asked
companies to voluntarily ``sign on'' to the document. As of July 2017,
the following organizations and companies have agreed to implement the
Core Principles into their contracts with farmers.
AGCO DuPont Pioneer National Farmers Union
Ag Connections, Inc. Farm Dog National Potato
Council
Agrible, Inc.* Farmobile LLC * National Sorghum
Producers
AgSense Granular * North American
Equipment Dealers
Assoc.
AgWorks Grower Information OnFarm
Services Cooperative
Ag Leader Technology GROWMARK, Inc.* Raven Industries
American Farm Bureau Independent Data Reinke Manufacturing
Fed. Management LLC * Co., Inc.
American Soybean Assoc. John Deere Syngenta
Beck's Hybrids * Mapshots, Inc. The Climate
CNH Industrial National Assoc. of Corporation--a
Wheat Growers division of Monsanto
Conservis * National Barley Growers USA Rice Federation
Assoc.
Crop IMS National Corn Growers Valley Irrigation
Assoc.
CropMetrics National Cotton Council ZedX Inc.
Dow AgroSciences LLC
* Company certified to be Ag Data Transparent. For more information,
visitwww.agdatatransparent.com.
A copy of the Core Principles is attached as Exhibit A.
2. The Ag Data Transparent Effort
Having the Core Principles in place was a great starting point for
the ag data industry to address farmers' concerns with ag data privacy,
use, and control. However, the Core Principles are only guidelines, and
only valuable if companies incorporate the Core Principles into their
contracts with farmers. Therefore, following the release of the Core
Principles, several farm groups and industry stakeholders worked
together to create an independent verification tool that could help
farmers determine if ag tech providers are abiding by the Core
Principles. This tool is called the Ag Data Transparency Evaluator. It
is a simple three-step process:
Participating companies must answer ten questions about how
they store, use, and transfer ag data.
The ten question answer form is reviewed by an independent
third party for transparency and completeness.
If the evaluation is acceptable, the company is awarded the
``Ag Data Transparent'' seal of approval for use on its future
marketing materials.
Participation is voluntary, but all companies that signed onto the
Core Principles have been asked to participate in the Ag Data
Transparent effort as well.
a. The 10 Question Evaluation
Here is a list of the ten questions that each participant is asked
to answer as part of the evaluation:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. What categories of data does the product or service collect from me
(the farmer)?
2. Do the Ag Technology Provider's (ATP's) agreements address ownership
of my data after my data is transferred to the ATP?
3. If the ATP contracts with other companies to provide data related
services, does the ATP require these companies to adhere to the ATP's
privacy policies with me?
4. Will the ATP obtain my consent before providing other companies with
access to my data?
5. After I upload data to the ATP, will it be possible to retrieve my
original complete dataset in an original or equivalent format?
6. Will the ATP notify me when its agreements change?
7. Will the ATP notify me if a breach of data security occurs that
causes disclosure of my data to an outside party?
8. Upon my request, can my original dataset be deleted when my contract
with the ATP terminates?
9. Do the ATP's agreements establish how long my original datasets will
be retained?
10. Do the ATP's agreements address what happens to my data if the ATP
is sold to another company?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Answers to all questions except for question 1 are ``yes'' or
``no,'' but companies are also given space to explain their answer.
b. Reviewing the 10 Question Evaluation
After an ag tech company completes the ten question evaluation
form, the company submits its answers to an independent third party
evaluator to determine compliance. Janzen Agricultural Law LLC is the
law firm that has been selected to conduct the evaluations. After
reviewing a company's answers, we typically go back to that company
with suggestions for improving its contracts and policies to bring into
compliance with Core Principles. Companies then make those revisions to
their contracts and policies and resubmit their ten question form. Once
a company's answers align with the Core Principles, we send an official
letter designating the company as ``Ag Data Transparent'' and
authorizing use of the seal of approval.
The final, approved ten question answer forms are posted on the Ag
Data Transparent website at www.AgDataTransparent.com Farmers can
research and review companies' answers online. The website requires no
log in and is free to use. An example of the home page is attached as
Exhibit B.
c. The Ag Data Transparent Seal of Approval
Companies that undergo evaluation and are approved as ``Ag Data
Transparent'' may then use the seal of approval on their websites and
marketing materials. To date, eight companies have completed the
evaluation and been approved as ``Ag Data Transparent.'' These eight
companies are:
AgIntegrated, Inc.
Agrible, Inc.
Beck's Hybrids.
Conservis Corporation.
Farmobile.
Granular.
GROWMARK.
Independent Data Management LLC.
The participants are diverse, from a Silicon Valley ag tech
startup, to a Midwestern seedcompany, to one of the nation's largest
farm cooperatives and ag retailers. These companiesmay use the Ag Data
Transparent seal on their websites, denoting their compliance with
theCore Principles. Farmers who see the seal of approval will know the
company went through thetime and effort to certify its contract.
The Ag Data Transparent process addresses farmers' three main
concerns with ag data. First, the process instills trust. No company
submits its contracts to a voluntary evaluation unless the company is
willing to revise its contracts, as necessary, to bring them into
compliance with the Core Principles. Second, loss of control is
addressed by requiring tech providers to obtain farmer consent before
transferring data to third parties. Finally, farmers' complexity
frustration is addressed by condensing all of a tech provider's
contracts into a ten question form that answers the questions farmers
want to know. The Ag Data Transparent process makes contracts better.
d. Who is behind the Ag Data Transparent effort?
The Ag Data Transparent effort is governed by a nonprofit
corporation, the Ag Data Transparency Evaluator Inc. The corporate
bylaws create two classes of directors: (1) farm organizations that are
made up of farmer-member organizations; and (2) diverse ag technology
providers, referred to as ``industry partners.'' The farm organizations
are American Farm Bureau Federation, American Soybean Association,
National Corn Growers Association, National Farmers Union, National
Sorghum Producers, National Association of Wheat Growers and National
Potato Council. The industry partner board members are ag technology
providers ranging from large corporations, medium-sized companies, and
ag tech startup organizations.
Janzen Agricultural Law LLC, which serves as the administrator of
the program and conducts the evaluation reviews, is not a board member.
3. The Ag Data Use Policy
Our law firm also drafts terms of service, license agreements,
privacy polices, and other contracts for ag technology providers. This
work has confirmed many concerns facing farmers today when it comes to
ag data. We see how companies struggle to communicate clearly how they
intend to store, use, and transfer ag data.
For these reasons, we have encouraged companies to draft ``data use
policies'' or ``data use agreements'' for their farmers. In a data use
contract, the technology provider addresses all of the issues raised by
the ten questions and the Core Principles. For example, a data use
policy will explain what information the provider collects and what
permission is required before the provider transfers that data to
another party.
From our standpoint, the Ag Data Transparent effort has helped
drive more technology providers into creating data use policies. Thus,
the effort has paid dividends even for some companies that have not
participated in evaluations because it has caused them to rethink how
they are contracting with farmers.
Conclusion
The Ag Data Transparent effort is great step towards bringing
transparency to ag data contracts between farmers and their technology
providers. Wider participation would certainly help the effort, but
that is up to the industry. Out of the dozens of ag tech providers with
cloud-based platforms on the market today, only eight have embraced the
process. To be fair, others are in the process but adoption could still
be faster and better.
Farmers should ask their technology providers why they have not
earned that Ag Data Transparent seal. This Subcommittee should ask
technology providers this question as well when they come before you to
testify.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your time and attention to this
important issue. I look forward to answering any questions you may have
for me.
Todd J. Janzen, Janzen Agricultural Law LLC.
Exhibit A
Privacy and Security Principles for Farm Data
(Ag Data's Core Principles)
November 2014
The recent evolution of precision agriculture and farm data is
providing farmers with tools, which can help to increase productivity
and profitability.
As that technology continues to evolve, the undersigned
organizations and companies believe the following data principles
should be adopted by each Agriculture Technology Provider (ATP).
It is imperative that an ATP's principles, policies and practices
be consistent with each company's contracts with farmers. The
undersigned organizations are committed to ongoing engagement and
dialogue regarding this rapidly developing technology.
Education: Grower education is valuable to ensure clarity between
all parties and stakeholders. Grower organizations and industry should
work to develop programs, which help to create educated customers who
understand their rights and responsibilities. ATPs should strive to
draft contracts using simple, easy to understand language.
Ownership: We believe farmers own information generated on their
farming operations. However, it is the responsibility of the farmer to
agree upon data use and sharing with the other stakeholders with an
economic interest, such as the tenant, landowner, cooperative, owner of
the precision agriculture system hardware, and/or ATP, etc. The farmer
contracting with the ATP is responsible for ensuring that only the data
they own or have permission to use is included in the account with the
ATP.
Collection, Access and Control: An ATP's collection, access and use
of farm data should be granted only with the affirmative and explicit
consent of the farmer. This will be by contract agreements, whether
signed or digital.
Notice: Farmers must be notified that their data is being collected
and about how the farm data will be disclosed and used. This notice
must be provided in an easily located and readily accessible format.
Transparency and Consistency: ATPs shall notify farmers about the
purposes for which they collect and use farm data. They should provide
information about how farmers can contact the ATP with any inquiries or
complaints, the types of third parties to which they disclose the data
and the choices the ATP offers for limiting its use and disclosure.
An ATP's principles, policies and practices should be transparent
and fully consistent with the terms and conditions in their legal
contracts. An ATP will not change the customer's contract without his
or her agreement.
Choice: ATPs should explain the effects and abilities of a farmer's
decision to opt in, opt out or disable the availability of services and
features offered by the ATP. If multiple options are offered, farmers
should be able to choose some, all, or none of the options offered.
ATPs should provide farmers with a clear understanding of what services
and features may or may not be enabled when they make certain choices.
Portability: Within the context of the agreement and retention
policy, farmers should be able to retrieve their data for storage or
use in other systems, with the exception of the data that has been made
anonymous or aggregated and is no longer specifically identifiable.
Non-anonymized or non-aggregated data should be easy for farmers to
receive their data back at their discretion.
Terms and Definitions: Farmers should know with whom they are
contracting if the ATP contract involves sharing with third parties,
partners, business partners, ATP partners, or affiliates. ATPs should
clearly explain the following definitions in a consistent manner in all
of their respective agreements: (1) farm data; (2) third party; (3)
partner; (4) business partner; (5) ATP partners; (6) affiliate; (7)
data account holder; (8) original customer data. If these definitions
are not used, ATPs should define each alternative term in the contract
and privacy policy. ATPs should strive to use clear language for their
terms, conditions and agreements.
Disclosure, Use and Sale Limitation: An ATP will not sell and/or
disclose non-aggregated farm data to a third party without first
securing a legally binding commitment to be bound by the same terms and
conditions as the ATP has with the farmer. Farmers must be notified if
such a sale is going to take place and have the option to opt out or
have their data removed prior to that sale. An ATP will not share or
disclose original farm data with a third party in any manner that is
inconsistent with the contract with the farmer. If the agreement with
the third party is not the same as the agreement with the ATP, farmers
must be presented with the third party's terms for agreement or
rejection.
Data Retention and Availability: Each ATP should provide for the
removal, secure destruction and return of original farm data from the
farmer's account upon the request of the farmer or after a pre-agreed
period of time. The ATP should include a requirement that farmers have
access to the data that an ATP holds during that data retention period.
ATPs should document personally identifiable data retention and
availability policies and disposal procedures, and specify requirements
of data under policies and procedures.
Contract Termination: Farmers should be allowed to discontinue a
service or halt the collection of data at any time subject to
appropriate ongoing obligations. Procedures for termination of services
should be clearly defined in the contract.
Unlawful or Anti-Competitive Activities: ATPs should not use the
data for unlawful or anticompetitive activities, such as a prohibition
on the use of farm data by the ATP to speculate in commodity markets.
Liability & Security Safeguards: The ATP should clearly define
terms of liability. Farm data should be protected with reasonable
security safeguards against risks such as loss or unauthorized access,
destruction, use, modification or disclosure. Polices for notification
and response in the event of a breach should be established.
The undersigned organizations for the Privacy and Security
Principles of Farm Data as of April 1, 2016.
AGCO DuPont Pioneer National Potato
Council
Ag Connections, Inc. Farm Dog National Sorghum
Producers
Agrible, Inc.* Farmobile LLC * North American
AgSense Granular * Equipment Dealers
Association
AgWorks Grower Information OnFarm
Services Cooperative
Ag Leader Technology GROWMARK, Inc.* Raven Industries
American Farm Bureau Independent Data Reinke Manufacturing
Federation Management LLC * Co., INC.
American Soybean John Deere Syngenta
Association
Beck's Hybrids * Mapshots, Inc. The Climate
CNH Industrial National Association of Corporation--a
Wheat Growers division of Monsanto
Conservis * National Barley Growers USA Rice Federation
Association
Crop IMS National Corn Growers Valley Irrigation
Association
CropMetrics National Cotton Council ZedX Inc.
Dow AgroSciences LLC National Farmers Union
* Company that has also certified its policy is compliant with the Ag
Data Transparency Evaluator. For more information, visit
www.agdatatransparent.com.
Exhibit B
Ag Data Transparent Homepage (www.AgDataTransparent.com)
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Janzen.
Ms. Casurella, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF DEBORAH CASURELLA, CHIEF EXECUTIVE
OFFICER, INDEPENDENT DATA MANAGEMENT, LLC,
HUDSON, WI
Ms. Casurella. Thanks for the opportunity to be here today.
I am going to talk about production agriculture, also known as
precision ag, its impact on farmers, the USDA, and crop
insurance companies.
A key way to help farmers, the government, and taxpayers
realize the benefits of precision ag technology is to open the
third-party channel and allow producers to report from home.
This can be done with commercial software, much like the IRS
did in 1986, by allowing taxpayers to use products like
TurboTax to report their acres.
To me, the most impressive pieces of precision ag are the
sensors connected to control systems that run the equipment.
This technology allows farmers to achieve better yields, use
fewer resources, and reduce the impact on the environment, and
ultimately meet world food demand.
The adoption rate is increasing. Estimates say that
precision ag is already used on 70 percent of acres. A
significant byproduct is data. Farmers and ranchers are
collecting all sorts of information, but they are last to the
trough to get benefits from their own data.
Both FSA and crop insurance agents require farmers to
submit an annual report of farm acres, but we don't make it
easy for them. Farmers who use precision ag start with an
electronic version of their planting information, including the
exact geographic location of each and every seed in the ground.
The current reporting process will see that data translated
somewhere between three and eight times back and forth between
tabular data and maps, from electronic to paper and back, all
to end up in electronic form where it started, but in
government systems.
For 7 years, the USDA has been working on a new system to
share common information electronically between agencies. For
the past 3 crop years, farmers have been able to report the
common information just once, either to the FSA or their crop
insurance agent, and have that information electronically
shared with the other. This is a good step and a direct result
of the Acreage Crop Reporting Streamlining Initiative, ACRSI,
which was reauthorized in the 2014 Farm Bill.
The reporting standards for RMA and FSA include geospatial
data, the map, along with crop and acreage information, but
much of that information is not required, which causes two
problems. First, even if a crop insurance agent collects the
geospatial data, and many do, they don't provide it to the FSA
because it is not required. And second, FSA and RMA don't
exchange that optional data, the maps, with each other. Because
the data is incomplete, the other agency doesn't use it.
Frustrated farmers must still visit both the FSA county
office and their crop insurance agent and share the same
information to complete reporting. Three main reasons for the
visit. First, farmers must validate and sign their acreage
report in each office. Second, farmers must provide program-
specific information to the second agency that wasn't collected
by the first agency. And third, farmers need to complete their
maps.
The USDA knows it is a problem and is actively working on
it. In 2015, as part of the ACRSI initiative, FSA conducted a
pilot for electronic acreage reporting using precision ag data.
One of the things the pilot tested was allowing farmers to use
third-party commercial software to report their acres.
Independent Data Management, using MyAgData, was selected to
test that channel, and the pilot was an overwhelming success.
MyAgData was a bridge, because it included words, numbers, and
maps, not just the required data but also the optional data,
and one report could be used for both FSA and RMA.
Because the data was more precise, participants reported an
average of 4.7 percent fewer acres. That means a lower
insurance premium for the farmer, decreased premium subsidy
funded by taxpayers, lower indemnity for crop insurance
companies and the RMA, and a reduction in claims because yield
was not diluted across unplanted acres.
Think of the numbers with expanded use. If 25 percent of
the acres were reported using a grower's actual field
boundaries, and the average reported acres were 4.7 lower,
producer premiums and taxpayer subsidies could be reduced by up
to $179 million annually. That is a conservative number, but
$179 million is a reasonable number to expect with 25 percent
of acres.
And that is only insurance premiums. What are the savings
on indemnities? What if this also applied to farm programs?
Again, just using map tools to do reporting changed the
agency's visit length from hours to minutes, and despite the
success the third-party channel remains closed.
USDA can accept the standard. They share it between
agencies today. Both FSA and RMA understand the benefits, and
the FSA union supports it. All that is required are minor
system changes.
Farmers plant fields. Let them report what they plant. It
is more accurate. It saves time and money for farmers and the
agencies and it saves taxpayer dollars.
Complete accurate data is the lifeblood of farm programs,
crop insurance, and conservation programs. The data is already
being collected. Let's use it.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Casurella follows:]
Prepared Statement of Deborah Casurella, Chief Executive Officer,
Independent Data Management, LLC, Hudson, WI
The company was founded in 2012 and funded primarily by farmers to
provide technology to make it easier for farmers to submit acreage
reports to the USDA. That sounds pretty simple, but like many things in
agriculture, it is a bit more complicated than it appears.
We started with software that could take data from a wide variety
of precision ag equipment (about 110 different formats), translate that
data into usable annotated maps, overlay the government's description
of the field called a Common Land Unit (CLU) on the map, give the
farmer tools to review and fill in any missing data and print documents
that the farmer could take to their crop insurance agent or the Farm
Services Agency (FSA) and report. We've grown into a full function
acreage reporting suite of tools including a mobile version that allows
data capture in the field.
I have over 30 years of hands on experience delivering practical
operations and information technology solutions to solve real business
problems. I have worked in environments ranging from small startups to
large multinationals in insurance (including crop insurance),
transportation and health care.
I chaired the AgGateway data privacy policy committee that,
together with American Farm Bureau Federation produced the first widely
recognized set of privacy standards for ag data. AgGateway is a leading
ag industry group. Those privacy standards have been largely adopted by
more than 50 ag technology companies.
I am going to talk about precision agriculture (precision ag)
technology, how that technology has impacted farmers and their
interactions with government programs, USDA and the crop insurance
companies and I will suggest that a key way to help farmers, the
government and the taxpayers realize some of the potential benefits
that have been unlocked is to open the third party channel for acreage
reporting and give farmers the option to report from home using
commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software much like the IRS did in 1986
by allowing taxpayers to use products like Turbo Tax and other third
party software to report income tax.
In 2009, I became CIO of an Approved Insurance Provider (AIP) and
was surprised at the widespread use of technology in farming. Most
impressive are the control systems that run the equipment and the
precision agriculture instrumentation that guides them to allow farmers
to achieve better yields, use fewer resources, and reduce the impact on
the environment.
The adoption rate of this technology is increasing. Some estimates
say precision ag is already used on close to 70% of crop acres.
One of the significant by-products is data. Farmers and ranchers
are collecting all sorts of information about their operation, but they
are last to the trough to get benefits from their own data. The ``big
ag'' companies and equipment manufacturers find ways to collect and
aggregate data and use it to their advantage but the application of
farm data to directly benefit the average farmer is rare.
When I refer to tabular data, I mean words and numbers. When I talk
about geospatial data, think maps.
The Farm Service Agency (FSA) requires farmers and ranchers
participating in their programs to submit an annual report on all
cropland use on their farms. Crop insurance agents for providers
approved by the USDA Risk Management Agency (RMA) also require these
reports. But we don't make it easy for the farmer. For years, farmers
and ranchers have been required to enter the common information from
their acreage reports at both the county FSA office and at their crop
insurance agent's office.
Farmers using precision ag start with an electronic version of
their planting information including the exact geographic location of
each and every seed in the ground. The current reporting process will
see that precise data translated somewhere between three and eight
times, back and forth between tabular data and maps and from electronic
formats to paper and back, all to end up in electronic form (where it
started) in the government systems.
For the past 7 years, USDA has been working on a new system to
better collaborate and streamline the collection of common information
that can be securely and electronically shared between FSA and the Risk
Management Agency (RMA). For the past 3 crop years, farmers and
ranchers been able to provide the common information from their acreage
reports just once--either to FSA or to their crop insurance agent--and
have that common information securely and electronically shared with
the other. This is a direct result of USDA's Acreage Crop Reporting
Streamlining Initiative (ACRSI) which was reauthorized in the 2014 Farm
Bill.
The reporting standard for both RMA and FSA includes geospatial
data (maps) along with regular crop and acreage information but much of
it is not required. This causes at least two problems. First, even if a
crop insurance company collects the geospatial data (and some do), they
don't provide it as part of their report because it is not required.
And second, FSA and RMA do not require the exchange of optional data
with each other. This means that the interagency exchanged data is
usually ignored because, to use the data, each agency requires some of
the optional data. The end result is that frustrated farmers must visit
both the FSA county office and their crop insurance agent's office and
share the same information to complete reporting.
There are three main reasons for this:
1. Farmers must validate and sign their respective acreage reports
in each office. Electronic signature is accepted in crop
insurance, but not yet in FSA reporting.
2. Farmers must provide the program-specific information to the
second agency that was not required to report to the first
agency.
3. Farmers must complete maps (the geospatial data).
USDA knows this is a problem and has been actively working on it.
In 2015, as part of USDA's Acreage Crop Reporting Streamlining
Initiative (ACRSI), the FSA conducted a pilot for electronic acreage
reporting. One of the things the pilot tested was allowing farmers to
use third party commercial software to report their acres. Independent
Data Management, using MyAgData' participated as the 3rd
party software provider and the pilot was an overwhelming success on
several levels:
Farmers that reported using precision ag data saw an average of
4.7% fewer acres reported. The increased accuracy of precision ag data
meant a lower crop insurance premium for the farmer, decreased premium
subsidies funded by taxpayers, lower indemnity for crop insurance
companies and the Risk Management Agency (RMA), and a reduction in
claims as yield was not diluted across unplanted acres. Ultimately this
will result in higher guarantees for a producer. Think of the numbers
with expanded use. If 25% of acres were reported using a grower's
accurate field boundaries and the average was a reduction of reported
acres of 4.74%, producer annual premiums and taxpayer subsidies could
be reduced by up to $179M. That's only crop insurance premium. What are
the savings on indemnities? What if this also applied to farm programs?
The third party software provided the bridge because its reporting
included not just the required data, but also the optional data and one
reporting could be used for both FSA and RMA.
Just using map-based tools to do either precision ag based
reporting or electronic manual reporting provided a big reduction in
the effort involved to report for the farmers and for USDA.
Despite this success, the third party channel remains closed.
USDA can accept electronic transmissions from any third party. The
standards have been out to the ag industry for a year and used for 3
years by the agencies. The FSA and Risk Management Agency (RMA) both
understand the benefits. The National Association of FSA County Office
Employees (NASCOE) has been supportive of ACRSI. All that is required
are minor system changes and a policy change to open the third party
channel for reporting.
Farmers plant fields. Let them report what they plant. It is more
accurate, saves them time and money, saves the agencies time and money
and saves taxpayer money. And the more accurate data helps not only
current programs, but future ones be more effective and more efficient
saving even more time and money.
Thank you.
Fields as Planted by a Producer
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Taxpayer paid subsidies and benefits for crop insurance and
farm programs could bereduced by 4.73% if acres were collected
using a producers['] electronic field boundaries.
Producer Fields & Common Land Units (CLUs)
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
While lines are the producer's CLUs.
Yellow represents planted corn, dark green is beans, red
hashing is crop planted outside of a CLU, light green is idle
ground with a CLU.
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Well done, Ms. Casurella.
Mr. Royse, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF ROGER ROYSE, J.D., FOUNDER AND OWNER, ROYSE LAW
FIRM, PC AND ROYSE AgTech INNOVATION
NETWORK, MENLO PARK, CA
Mr. Royse. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me
here today. I appreciate the opportunity to be at the table and
not on the menu, at least for today.
My name is Roger Royse. I am the founder of the Royse Law
Firm. We are a Silicon Valley law firm, a full-service firm.
I also founded a group about 5 years ago called Silicon
Valley AgTech, which has since morphed into the Royse AgTech
Innovation Network. And originally, I founded that group to
address the problem that Mr. Tiller pointed out, and that is
seeing a lot of very smart technologists in Silicon Valley come
up with a lot of cool gadgets that nobody cared about. We have
put the technologists together with the farmers, and with the
venture capital community, to try to make things happen, and we
have been pretty successful at that.
In our law firm, I represent almost all technology
startups. A lot of them are what we call ATPs, agriculture
technology providers, a few VCs, but for the most part the
people that are creating the technology that is being used in
the field. And I am here to tell you that we are very
interested in anything that will encourage innovation and not
hinder it.
I know today that we are going to talk about precision
agriculture, especially about data, and it comes down to really
three big issues: privacy, security, and ownership. And I hope
we have an opportunity to dive into that, because as a lawyer,
I can tell you that this definition of ownership is a
relatively complex thing. It is not as simple as it might seem,
especially when we get into data.
I have been doing this for 5 years in the agriculture
community now, and I have heard all these concerns about all
these complex legal provisions that have to be negotiated, to
which I reply, ``Welcome to my world.'' This is the way the
rest of the world operates. This is how businesses operate. We
negotiate these deals. And I would hope to encourage that
Congress take a light hand here when it comes to reshuffling
economic decks that have been negotiated by the parties.
Having said that, I applaud these efforts to create
standards and to create transparency and certification, but
let's keep in mind that not all data is created equal, and all
of these agreements will have to be customized to some extent.
Now, a couple of things I do want to mention. We do have
some law here. We have section 5 of the FTC Act, which
prohibits unfair and deceptive practices. I acknowledge it is
not likely to be applied in an agricultural setting. Hopefully,
somewhere down the road the USDA may be empowered or enabled to
enforce provisions similar to the FTC Act.
I have heard some discussion about applying principles
similar to HIPAA and Gramm-Leach-Bliley, which require privacy,
disclosure, and security on collectors of data in healthcare
and in financial services. Having suffered through Gramm-Leach-
Bliley in my practice, I don't think that is appropriate in the
agricultural setting.
I do think we can take some instruction from the securities
laws. I do a lot of securities financings, and securities is
about disclosure. A lot of what we are agonizing over here
could be solved with very good disclosure rules.
In sum, again, I hope that Congress treads lightly on this.
I hope that other than enabling the USDA to perhaps enforce
some standards and remove bad actors from the market, I really
hope that we will continue to respect the idea of freedom of
contract, as a lawyer, and to allow the market to sort this
out, and to let the industry work on these standards.
With that, I am going to cede the rest of my time, and I
welcome your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Royse follows:]
Prepared Statement of Roger Royse, J.D., Founder and Owner, Royse Law
Firm, PC and Royse AgTech Innovation Network, Menlo Park, CA
Introduction
Thank you for the opportunity to present my testimony and share my
view from Silicon Valley and beyond on the AgTech Revolution and the
potential role of Congress in its development. My name is Roger Royse.
I grew up in western North Dakota, where my family has been (and still
is) involved in the produce business since 1948, both in trucking
produce from around the country to the Midwest as well as sales of
produce to the public. I now reside in northern California and am the
founder of the Royse Law Firm, PC, a business law firm based in Silicon
Valley with offices in San Francisco and southern California. The Royse
Law Firm conducts one of the premier AgTech law practices in the
country, helping tech companies with legal transactions including
entity formation, financings, commercial contracts, and M&A.
Five years ago, as an adjunct to our AgTech law practice, I started
an AgTech group in Silicon Valley. That program has since evolved into
the Royse AgTech Innovation Network. Our mandate has been to promote
the growing field of AgTech through conferences, events, webinars,
white papers, and facilitated meetings between tech companies and the
farmers, big Ag and Food, investors, and potential partners. The
Network sponsored an accelerator for AgTech companies recently and has
taken its message worldwide. I can report that we have been
spectacularly successful in our mission, as many of our constituents
have launched from our platform, found funding, gained customers, and
struck deals with partners. We are on the web at www.royseAgTech.com
and www.svAgTech.org.
I am here today to give you my view of this developing movement
that I call the AgTech Revolution, including where it is, where it is
going, and how you can help.
Background
American agriculture has undergone several eras of technological
innovation. Agriculture was transformed by an industrial revolution
through the transition to new manufacturing processes, a green
revolution that increased agricultural production worldwide in the
latter part of the last century, a genetic revolution that increased
crop and livestock production, an information revolution that realized
the value of data, and now an AgTech revolution that pushes every acre
to its maximum potential. The current AgTech Revolution will be no less
significant or sudden than any technological change that has come
before it, and Congress has an opportunity to pave the way for this new
day by reviewing existing law, considering new incentives and in some
cases allowing the market to sort it out.
Numerous factors have enabled the AgTech Revolution, and I
summarize a few of them here:
1. Food Security. Climate change, a growing global population,
rising food prices and environmental pressures are factors
that have impacted people's physical, social, and economic
access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food. Such
pressures prompted a revolution in the agricultural
industry that embraces technological innovation to optimize
food safety and production.
2. The Rise of Consumerism. The ``Grow Local Movement,'' fueled by
the growing middle class' desire for convenience and year-
round food, has encouraged development for technologies in
urban and vertical farming, waste, transport, and
packaging. Additionally, there has been increased consumer
support for transparency in the supply chain and GMO and
gene editing practices, as well as environmental
sustainability.
3. The Declining Labor Market. Farm labor shortages and rising wages
have resulted in increased labor costs, which then
contribute to increased investments in technologies that
would replace the manual labor part of the farming process.
The average farmworker in California is middle aged, and
the problem will get worse before it gets better.
4. The Changing Agricultural Markets. A comparison of agricultural
production patterns in the U.S. between 1920 and 1995 shows
that harvested cropland has declined from 350 to 320
million acres, and the agricultural labor work force has
decreased from 26 to just 2.6 percent. In spite of this,
agricultural production in 1995 was 3.3 times greater than
in 1920 to account for greater demand, demonstrating that
productivity has increased and agricultural production
methods have changed. Likewise, as the world population has
more than doubled between 1950 and 1998, grain production
per person has increased by about 12 percent to keep up
with the greater world demand.
5. Increased Rural Internet Connectivity. The adoption and
application of AgTech rests on the availability of the
Internet. Due to the accelerating development of AgTech, it
is the new rural driver for Internet utilization. As of
2012, about 70% of farms in the U.S. had Internet
connectivity.
6. The Introduction of Venture Capital. AgTech startups raised more
than $320 million this year so far as a result of an uptick
in rounds of Series B financings. Funding recipients,
equipped with a diverse range of investment themes, are
backed by willing and active venture investors who have
become more comfortable with this space.
7. The Rise of Big Data. Farm data includes site-specific data
(e.g., information about seeding rates, soil nutrients,
fertilizer, pesticides, water, yield data), meta data
(e.g., information about number of acres, inputs applied,
crops) and big data (i.e., the aggregation of farm data
from numerous operations). Technology now enables farmers
to utilize farm data to help inform their work decisions
and optimize production.
New Technologies
A list all of the new technologies informing modern agriculture
would fill a book, and I do not attempt to list them all here. However,
it is worth pointing out a few of the new technologies that I have seen
being developed or implemented in the field.
5. Precision Agriculture. Precision Ag refers to the suite of
hardware and software solutions that allow farmers to
optimize efficiencies, reduce inputs, increase production
and capture useful data. Precision Ag includes the sensors
that gather information, the devices that transmit
information, and the software programs that convert the
data to actionable information. Sensor tech and the
Internet of things (IoT) has gone from merely being able to
report information back to the farmer to being able to make
recommendations based on that data. The tech can make these
recommendations at the level of the individual plant, can
deliver that data to a handheld device, and now can even
automatically adjust an input to optimize production.
Many companies have automated the process to a degree
previously not thought possible. Self-driving tractors,
robotic weeders and thinners, and artificial intelligence
(AI) and imaging enabled fruit sorters are in beta or in
use. The rise in labor costs have made automation a
necessity for farmers, and technology has stepped up to
fill the need.
2. GMO and Gene Editing. Almost none of our food today is made
independent of some form of genetic engineering. A carrot
today is a much different plant than a carrot of 100 years
ago. The same is true of grains, fruits, and vegetables.
The science of genetic engineering has now advanced beyond
its original applications, breeding, and GMOs. Recently,
genome editing (GEEN) has entered the marketplace. GEEN is
a type of genetic engineering in which DNA is inserted,
deleted or replaced in the genome using engineered
nucleases, or ``molecular scissors.'' GEEN technologies are
being developed for both plants and animals that change the
food we eat.
3. Controlled Environment Agriculture. Controlled environment Ag
(``CEA'') is also referred to as urban Ag, vertical
farming, and indoor Ag. The application of hydroponics,
aeroponics, solar tech, LED lighting and advanced building
techniques to agriculture has spurred an entire industry
designed to grow anything, anywhere at any time. Previously
CEA was challenged by high energy costs but advances in
technology are making CEA an environmentally friendly
solution to many of the world's problems in food
production.
4. Soil Health or Quality. Soil health (or soil quality) is the
capacity of soil to function as an ecosystem that sustains
plants, animals, and humans. Many technologies address soil
processes to increase productivity, resilience, and
environmental quality. Some technologies use biochar or
biomass to add nutrients to the soil and some use natural
agents to replace insecticides.
5. Water. California's recent drought has highlighted the need for
water tech. Many of the new technologies are aimed at
dealing with the next drought, and take new and innovative
approaches. Some of these technologies convert salty or
briny water to water that may be used for Ag, through
desalination or filtering. Other technologies pull water
from air, provide for transport, create water markets to
more efficiently distribute water, assist in storage,
prevent evaporation, or provide cheap access to
groundwater.
6. Food supply chain. Having been in the produce business, I have
seen in-person the large amount of waste, damage and loss
to food from the time it is harvested until it gets to the
consumer. Retailers today still rely on methods that
existed 50 years ago, but new and developing technologies
will monitor produce from field to table so that the ripest
product is sold first. E-commerce technologies provide new
efficiencies in the shipment and marketing of produce. This
is an area where information has real value in preventing
losses.
Farm Policy
Today, I would like to propose a few areas where I believe the
Federal Government can help agriculture solve the challenges facing it
and assist the adoption of new technologies that are designed to help
solve some of the problems described above.
1. Rural Broadband Access. Broadband access is the key to adoption
of AgTech. Farmers and their fields usually have reduced
accessibility to high-speed Internet provided by the
telephone or cable companies. We need Federal assistance to
bring high-speed Internet service to these farms that are
located in rural, sparsely-populated areas. Just as 19th
century railroads and 20th century interstate highways
played leading roles in American prosperity, high-speed
Internet is the factor that determines which rural
communities, and which farms, will enjoy economic growth
and prosperity in the 21st century.
One way to implement a rural broadband infrastructure is
through FirstNet. FirstNet is the largest amount of Federal
funding available for broadband infrastructure. Its purpose
is to create a national system of emergency communications
between all first responders. We propose that Congress
ensure that FirstNet emergency communications are provided
to rural regions of the U.S. and not limited to making
urban population centers a priority like most broadband
infrastructure initiatives.
Alternatively, or contemporaneously, the Federal Government may
implement a program that assists and encourages state and
local governments to invest in rural broadband
infrastructure. Congress can realize such a program by
offering states like California a match of Federal
resources. This way, from both Federal and state
perspectives, the public resources that are invested will
be leveraged. Notably, any leveraged public resources under
this program would need to be invested in the form of
grants in order to actually benefit the unserved and under-
served areas of California. Successful funding models
include the Internet For All Now Act in California and the
broadband infrastructure in the state of New York.
If we increase access to rural broadband in our nation's rural
areas, the same Internet platform used for farming in the
fields can be used to increase the overall prosperity and
quality of life in our nation's rural communities. For
example, broadband-enabled enterprises include health care,
education, job training, public safety, and technology.
Thus, funding rural broadband infrastructure is the single
most promising public resource investment the Federal
Government can make to provide unserved and under-served
regions of the country with economic prosperity,
opportunity, and technological innovation.
2. Specialty Crops in the Farm Bill. Specialty crops generally
consist of plants used by people for food, medicinal
purposes, and aesthetic gratification. They are defined by
the USDA as ``fruits and vegetables, tree nuts, dried
fruits, and horticulture and nursery crops (including
floriculture).'' The diversity of specialty crops and their
variety of uses make the task of developing policy in this
area particularly challenging. Federal funds can be used to
support projects ranging from food safety compliance to
distribution systems and marketing.
Federal funds can also provide scientific advances that enable
our country to use the most efficient and environmentally
sound agriculture technology in the world. Funding this
research is imperative due to the industry's increasing
reliance on science and technology to maintain profitable
production. Likewise, labor dependency is an ongoing
concern in the absence of labor saving technology. Federal
support for specialty crops still differs in significant
ways from commodity crops. Farm bills have historically
focused on farm commodity program support for the staple,
non-perishable, and generally storable commodities such as
corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, rice, and sugar until
specialty crops and organic agriculture were included in a
separate title in the 2008 Farm Bill.
Federal investment in agriculture technology is a promising use
of farm bill funds to stabilize prices, reduce manual
labor, and create permanent jobs with higher income for
domestic workers. Thus, adequate funding for the research
and development of agriculture technology protects U.S.
crop production and keeps producers in business.
3. Privacy and Data Security in AgTech. A major issue that farmers
are concerned about is whether they have sole ownership of
farm data.\1\ Because farm data, if kept secret, is
information that derives independent economic value from
not being publicly known, it could possibly be accorded
trade secret protection. Aside from trade secret
protection, there are currently no other laws in place to
protect the data farmers transfer to AgTech companies.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Digital data is data that represents forms of data, including
elements of the physical world, by using specific machine language
systems that can be interpreted by various technologies (e.g.,
conversion of a physical scene into a digital image). Digital data
collected from farming operations becomes farm data. Farm data includes
site-specific data (e.g., information about seeding rates, soil
nutrients, fertilizer, pesticides, water, yield data), meta data (e.g.,
information about number of acres, inputs applied, crops) and big data
(i.e., the aggregation of farm data from numerous operations). Farmers
can utilize farm data to help inform their work decisions and optimize
production.
Existing legislation and regulations regarding privacy and data
security are applicable to personal information. In light
of the importance of maintaining the security and
confidentiality of farm data, Congress might consider
legislation to demand accountability and transparency for
AgTech Providers (``ATPs'') entrusted with managing farm
data.
The American Farm Bureau Federation has said that big data can
do for agriculture what the Green Revolution and
biotechnology did for agriculture. While big data analytics
has resulted in improvements in farming, some farmers are
concerned that, unless restrictions are imposed on the
ATP's use and disclosure of farm data, ATPs might share
farm data, including farm research and specialist
practices, of one farmer with competing farmers or with
third parties, such as environmental and animal welfare
lobbies, in a manner disadvantageous to farmers. There is
also concern that ATPs might sell farm data to third
parties in connection with marketing such third parties'
own products and services without compensating farmers for
the revenue generated by the ATP from the sale of their
farm data.
As a first step towards dealing with these concerns, a
coalition of certain farm organizations, including the
American Farm Bureau Organization, and certain ATPs, have
agreed to a set of non-binding ``Privacy and Security
Principles for Farm Data'' that they hope will be adopted
by other ATPs. The complete text of the Privacy and
Security Principles for Farm Data is available on the
American Farm Bureau Organization's website. It reads very
much like privacy and security principles for personally
identifiable information, including that the ATP must
provide farmers with notice that farm data is being
collected and about how the farm data will be disclosed and
used. Among other things, it requires that an ATP's
collection, access and use of farm data should be granted
only with the affirmative and explicit consent of the
farmer and that the ATP will not change the customer's
contract without his or her agreement.
The above standards are not law, however, and farmers must
prioritize the availability and usability of big data over
their own privacy and security. Farmers must also negotiate
with data management companies regarding the use of their
farm data. There is precedent for Federal regulation of
data privacy, although not specifically directed at
farming.
The FTC Act (section 5) provides the Federal Trade Commission
(the FTC) with broad discretion and authority to regulate
data privacy and protection practices of companies across
all industries.\2\ The FTC imposes sanctions on companies
that (i) disclose sensitive information (without consent);
(ii) fail to adequately keep consumer's personal
information secure; and (iii) fail to follow their own
privacy policies.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ The FTC's primary legal authority to regulate consumer privacy
and data security com[e]s from Section 5 of the FTC Act, which
prohibits entities from engage in unfair or deceptive acts or practices
in interstate commerce. It states in pertinent part: ``(1) Unfair
methods of competition in or affecting commerce, and unfair or
deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce, are hereby
declared unlawful. (2) The Commission is hereby empowered and directed
to prevent persons, partnerships, or corporations, [except certain
specified financial and industrial sectors] from using unfair methods
of competition in or affecting commerce and unfair or deceptive acts or
practices in or affecting commerce.''
\3\ California has regulations in place regarding privacy and data
protection that Congress can adopt and apply to farm data. First, the
California Online Privacy Protection Act requires operators of
commercial websites and online services (including mobile apps) that
collect CA residents' personally identifiable information through a
website to conspicuously post their privacy policies. Second, S.B. 1386
(the California Breach Notification Law) requires notification to
affected individuals of an unauthorized acquisition of unencrypted
computerized data that compromises security, confidentiality, or
integrity of personal info of any CA resident. If applied to farm data,
the provider of AgTech services would be obligated to notify all
farmers whose data had been compromised.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
We suggest that, given the unique nature of agriculture,
Congress consider an enforcement regime for farm data that
is similar to that granted to the FTC under section 5 the
FTC Act.
4. AgTech Adoption Tax Credits. Despite the huge advances to be made
in agriculture through technology, there are still
challenges in its adoption. One of the first problems the
Royse AgTech Innovation Network encountered was the
disconnect between the technology entrepreneurs and the
farmers who would use their tech. There was and is, to be
sure, a difference between what technologists think farmers
want and what they actually can use, but that gap has been
closing as we reach out and involve the grower community in
our efforts. The much bigger hurdle is the fact that
investing in technology is risky for any business, but
especially so for farmers. A grower in California might
only have 50 harvests in his lifetime, and cannot gamble a
crop on an untested technology. In addition, a grower might
be presented with numerous similar technologies. How is he
or she to justify the investment in evaluating them all? A
partial solution may lie in the Internal Revenue Code of
1986, as amended (the ``Code'').
The Code currently allows for a research and development credit
(``R&D Credit''), which was recently extended by the PATH
Act to benefit startups. The R&D Credit is a general
business tax credit under Code section 41 for companies
that incur research and development (R&D) costs in the
United States. While that credit incentivizes development,
it does not incentive adoption.
The investment tax credit (ITC), by contrast, allows a taxpayer
to deduct part of the cost of installing certain types of
energy systems and has been effective in promoting the
adoption of solar technology. The ITC, however, is aimed at
only a handful of qualifying uses, some of which could be
called AgTech. We propose that the ITC be broadened and
modified to encourage a wider range of Ag Technologies.
The Royse AgTech Innovation Network is in the process of
preparing a white paper on this topic, which will detail
how such a credit would work.
Conclusion
Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today and share my
thoughts on the AgTech Revolution, current challenges, and possible
solutions. I look forward to taking questions and continuing our
dialogue
The Chairman. Well done, Mr. Royse. I appreciate you being
here.
The chair would like to remind Members that they will be
recognized for questioning in the order of seniority for
Members who were here at the start of the hearing. After that,
Members will be recognized in order of arrival. I appreciate
Members' understanding. I would like to recognize myself for 5
minutes.
Mr. Janzen, I will start with you. You touched on something
in your testimony. Farmers have a deep sense of mistrust where
data is concerned, the idea of uploading their data into the
cloud. And you mentioned that that kind of stems from the fact
that there are no laws explicitly protecting that data.
Let me ask you: do you think that an independent
verification tool like Ag Data Transparent is sufficient to
address the concerns of farmers that they have, or do you think
Congress should look into developing data protection standards
in the future?
Mr. Janzen. Thank you.
I think that we are definitely, through the Ag Data
Transparency Evaluator, we are filling a gap there, because we
are addressing those farmer concerns, that mistrust. If we have
widespread participation in the industry, then I feel like we
are addressing the farmers' concerns in a way that means that
there is no need for any additional legislation that would
protect farm data.
Now, if the industry ends up looking the other way and not
caring about this, and farmers continue to express mistrust in
the future, then it is definitely worth taking another look
about whether or not there is something that could be done to
improve that situation.
The Chairman. Mr. Tiller, your thoughts on that?
Mr. Tiller. Well, I actually agree. As I am listening to
Todd, I am thinking about what Mr. Royse said. I do think that
farmers are astute businessmen. If they will take the time
through the knowledge they will gain through things like the
Transparency Evaluator, they will make contracts that make
sense.
I have always stood for farmers, if they knew what they
were bartering. If I am bartering my data for tools, I would
never want to take that away from them. Because I know farmers
that do understand it, they say: ``I don't mind putting my data
in an aggregated format, in other words, it be anonymized, my
name is off it, to be part of a benchmarking set, when I get
something in return.''
All I can say to end it up is I just want to be careful
that I don't, even with the cooperative, in trying to
understand ownership and all these issues, I create a world
where we can't be innovative, because sometimes innovative does
create running out on the bleeding edge a little bit. And so
that is where I would stand on that. I pretty much agree with
Todd.
The Chairman. Excellent.
Let's talk about actual application of technology and how
we can use data in a hands-on way.
Mr. Tiller, Mr. Royse, Texas, California, both of you are
having water problems, maybe different kinds of water problems,
but water problems. How does big data factor into the better
use of irrigation, managing finite water resources?
I will start with you, Mr. Royse.
Mr. Royse. Okay. Thanks very much.
We know about water problems out in California. To start, I
am seeing a lot of technologies around water that are attacking
the problem from ways that are highly innovative and
imaginative and sometimes unbelievable.
But with respect to big data, I think that the tools now,
the sensors are at the plant level. And we had heard a little
bit about precision farming earlier. We are seeing the ability
to provide some real conservation through these technology
tools, again, highlighting why broadband is so important.
It is important to note, by the way, that the technology
has moved, that I have seen, to where each sensor is its own
Internet user. In other words, it is not like a Christmas tree.
It is not daisy-chained. Each sensor has to load up to the
cloud. That requires a tremendous amount of Internet access.
But through these sensors and through being able to provide
just the right amount of water in the right place at the right
rate, we are seeing data being used to reduce water usage and
address our drought problem.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Tiller.
Mr. Tiller. I would add a couple things there. I am in
total agreement with what he is bringing up. But I spent a
decade also as an ag lender, so profitability is everything in
the end.
What I would say is, it is about water use, but I can see
farmers understanding profitability better and even changing
crops, growing different things, being able to use their water
in different ways, if they had the data to help them understand
what is the most profitable crop on this piece of ground.
Maybe I don't have a full pivot or circle of cotton. Maybe
that 130 is now 60. What do I do with the other 70 acres? Those
sorts of things data can help you understand.
The Chairman. Thank you.
I now recognize Ranking Member Nolan for 5 minutes.
Mr. Nolan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I have just got one question, then I will yield to my
colleagues here, and it is this: As ag data improves and has
become more useful to farmers, there appears to be a widening
gap among farmers, as well, that have access to this technology
and those who don't. And oftentimes some of the best producers
in the world are a mile or two apart from one another as
opposed to downtown where every 50 feet there is a user. It
makes it a little easier financially for businesses to provide
those services.
To be sure, as these technologies continue to grow, those
who have access to it will grow and prosper and those who don't
will suffer, even though they may very well be among our
greatest producers.
How do you expect the cost of getting these technologies to
all the farmers, how do you expect those costs to go down? And
what ideas or suggestions do you have for us to consider for
getting those costs down to an affordable level where all of
our farm producers will have access to them? Thank you.
Whoever. Step up. Tell us what you think.
Mr. Tiller. I will share a few thoughts, but I want to make
sure I leave time for the other panel members.
That is a vision of the cooperative, right? I mean, that is
what we would be about, making sure all producers had access to
the technologies that are developed in a fair and reasonable
cost mechanism. Some of the price points of some of the best
tools have been too high, but I have news for you, the adoption
of those has been very low. It looks like there has been
adoption, but even among some of the biggest growers, not what
you would think. They are going to have to bring the price
point down to prove the value even there.
I would say I really think innovation and technology and
broadband is actually going to be very helpful for a grower
with 100 acres. He is going to be able to store data in ways he
never could before because of the mobility of the smartphone,
being able to carry that computer in his pocket. It takes so
little cost of equipment to actually go out and implement these
things. And these are very scalable technologies.
I almost see it going the other way. Every grower will have
access to tools to make decisions in ways they have never had
it before.
I think these sensors are going to get so cheap. I was
looking at some Bluetooth technology that the sensor was $11,
and you could utilize these. That is an example. I actually
think it will go the other way.
I will yield to the other panelists.
Mr. Nolan. Real quick like, however, it is apparent that
some of the companies look at this and they say: Well, I have a
customer every 1\1/2\ mile, 2 miles, I am not going to invest
in that. And they are not investing in it in many cases.
You are right, the technology will lower the cost and
increase the benefits and whatnot, but if you don't have the
technology, how do we make sure we get it to everyone?
Mr. Tiller. What are you calling technology? I am going to
tell you----
Mr. Nolan. Broadband is what I am talking about.
Mr. Tiller. Okay. Now, there you go. I am in total
agreement with you there. Most of the farmers, I am amazed,
even with age, carrying the smartphone. I have seen this
happen. Four years ago I could be in a meeting and you could
carry it on. It doesn't matter what the age group, I can't
carry on the meeting unless I ask them: Can we all silence our
phones? I never thought that would be an issue because of the
average age of the farmer.
We have it. But you are right, connecting that and being
able to stay connected, it is a criteria we really are going to
have a gap to feed the world. If we don't close that gap by
providing that infrastructure, that is something that is going
to be missing.
Yes, I do agree with that. That is kind of a third-party
touch to the things I talk about. I don't develop that, but I
have to have it.
Mr. Nolan. Do you see an investment by the Federal
Government in broadband expansion and infrastructure as being
something we should consider?
Mr. Tiller. What has driven out the rural growth of
telecommunications all this time has been the support of the
RUS, the Universal Service Fund, and that mentality. I don't
know why we can't keep doing what we are doing.
I was involved with telecommunications for over 20 years,
served on a cooperative telecommunications board. Some of the
RUS permitting that is required to get the loan that you have
to do even before the loan is ready to be made and the cost
involved, if some of that could be looked at, it would be much
easier to get there.
There are a lot of things that you guys could do from the
Committee to actually help build that out. You could be the
catalyst to really keep that moving.
Mr. Nolan. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, my time is up. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Hey, listen, I was watching the clock there.
I didn't want to cut you off.
Mr. Abraham, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Abraham. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Royse, what are the protections in the agricultural
sector for data, and how do they compare to other businesses as
far as protection of data?
Mr. Royse. Yes, so it is commonly said that there really is
no law of farm data. There are general rules around data. There
is no Federal law of farm data at this point. In California,
where I am from, we have state law that protects the privacy of
what we call personally identifiable information, which could
apply to farm data. It doesn't always.
But most of the time, farmers are going to have to rely on
the law of trade secrets. And as you know, we now have a
Federal trade secret law. But trade secret is a little tricky.
It is not automatic for farm data. The information has to be
proprietary, has to be valuable, has to be secret, and the
owner has to take steps to keep it secret. It is very easy for
somebody to lose trade secret protection for this data.
The way that it is commonly protected these days is through
contract, I mean, and that is why we are having a lot of these
discussions, is because these contracts can be relatively
complex and involved.
Mr. Abraham. Thank you.
Mr. Tiller, you said in your testimony, your written
testimony, which I actually read, that all growers will be
impacted by the information revolution, and I totally agree
with that. We grow more cotton on my farm this year than we
have grown in the last 10 years.
What will be the biggest impact of those farmers that don't
invest in the information revolution?
Mr. Tiller. It is just very difficult to compete. I have
never liked to think of myself as competing against my
neighbor, because I am competing in a world market. Cotton
price, it is a global economy. But in truth, as I do, there is
a limited amount of land, and growers are trying to rent that
land. The most efficient producer is going to do the best job
of creating the yield off that farm.
I think that the benchmarking that is there today, if we
are not using data, just look at the varieties. Look at what
has happened in cotton, as an example, in the last 10 years. I
am amazed. I do cringe when I pay some of these technology
fees, but, in truth, I have the best varieties I have ever had.
Now, do they compensate for the difference in a $100 bag of
seed and a $400? It is difficult. I did the math this year in a
very rough cotton year, and I am questioning about what I have
in the field.
But if we don't continue to understand and be able to
relate to those varieties and understand I should put this
variety on this soil and these water conditions, I mean, I am
not going to be as profitable as I can, and then I will be not
as self-sustaining.
Data helps us be more self-sustaining, so I can look to
myself to help myself be shored up. And I can look to insurance
when I have weather-related events that I have no control over,
but I can control what variety I have in the field. That is an
example.
Mr. Abraham. I mean, knowledge is power and knowledge is
money in the farming community. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
The Chairman. The gentleman yields back.
I recognize Mrs. Bustos, for 5 minutes.
Mrs. Bustos. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thanks for our panel members for being here today.
Mr. Royse, your testimony, which I read in advance, was one
of the most fascinating agricultural pieces of information that
I have read in a very long time. But, it is a very impressive
group of people here. Thank you so much.
My district starts in central Illinois and covers the
entire northwestern part of the State of Illinois. Ag is our
number one economic driver. I am very, very interested in what
you are talking about today.
I want to tell you a really quick story. We have a brand
new company that started in a town called Galesburg. It is
called Integrated Precision Agriculture. And what they have
done is they have taken unmanned aerial vehicles, and they are
using that for spraying and surveying crops.
But what happened was they go to the state's Department of
Agriculture and they encountered this issue where the state's
Department of Agriculture struggled to understand the business
needs. And so they pointed out that in order to get their
pesticide license, they didn't know if they were sure of what
kind of training they needed. Did they need ground training or
did they need aerial training?
And so I just bring that up to say there are some struggles
here with new technology and how we are going to move forward.
But, it is a story that illustrates that what do we need to
deal with in government. My question really is aimed at all of
you, maybe a couple questions.
With regard to data and analytics, how can the Federal
Government not only remain flexible, but also help usher in new
technology? That is question number one. Is there a role for
the USDA staff on the ground, or our university extension
programs?
Anybody can take that first. Nobody needs to repeat what
the person ahead of them said. But whoever would like to
address that first and then we will just kind of go through the
list.
And you have an Illinois connection, right?
Ms. Casurella. I grew up in Illinois.
Mrs. Bustos. Then you go first.
Ms. Casurella. All right. I will take that. I moved out of
Illinois when I was 16, though.
Mrs. Bustos. Okay, then you get moved. Go ahead. You are
all right.
Ms. Casurella. In terms of ag data and analytics and how
the USDA can provide a role, a big part of it is providing best
management practices for farmers. And I will use an example
that impacts the Central Sands of Wisconsin as well as northern
Illinois.
With potatoes grown in sandy soil, they are typically
irrigated. And if you use the data collected on a combination
of sensors, it is sensors that understand the nitrates coming
through the soil to know when you need to apply your
fertilizer, your pesticide. If you apply it right after or
right before a rain, it is going to go right down through to
the place, it is not going to affect the top 8" in water
growth.
County extension and county offices, specifically on the
NRCS side, can definitely help farmers understand data,
available options, and what farming practices they need to use.
And I will couple that with add EQIP dollars to, in the case of
irrigated potatoes in sandy soils, add EQIP dollars to help the
producer pay for what could be a $50,000 investment in
technology. But for potatoes, if you manage them correctly,
your N2 stores go from eight truckloads to one
truckload if you manage irrigation.
There are a whole lot of benefits if there is the right
research study and best practices that a farmer can use, plus
funding, to help him get that technology in place. That is one
example.
Mrs. Bustos. Thank you.
Anybody else have anything to add?
Mr. Royse. I do. It is an interesting thing from the
standpoint of the tech providers that I work with, is they are
always very surprised--that example you just gave, I have a
hundred like that--to find out just how highly regulated
agriculture is. And we run into walls all the time. We run into
business models and business plans that just don't work because
of that.
I love the idea of education. It would be nice to see some
coordination possibly, but I don't know that I have any answers
other than that, but to say that you put your finger on what is
a real issue in this area and something that, I don't know if I
would say it is stifling innovation, but it is one of those
challenges we have to work through.
Mr. Tiller. I want to make one last statement. You did
mention the extension and the land-grant universities, and I am
going to tell you, when I first started farming 35 years ago,
they were unbelievably relevant; and they still are relevant,
because they are the only agnostic view we may get.
I think that digital agriculture will give them a new way
to actually make their data visible. And so I am hoping that
they can embrace that. They may need funding to do that.
But I know it will be helpful, because they are not selling
me anything. And to have them give me a view of the seed
varieties or the secret recipes I should be using versus me
trying to decide or have some company selling me something
trying to tell me. I would definitely like you all to continue
in that realm too.
Mrs. Bustos. That is a great point.
And with that, I am out of time. Thank you very much.
The Chairman. The gentlelady yields back.
And I recognize the gentleman from Nebraska for 5 minutes.
Mr. Bacon. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I appreciate you all coming in today and sharing your
expertise and your testimony.
Some of the questions I have you have touched on a little
bit, but I just want to make sure I understand it. But before I
do, since I was raised on a farm, we raised corn and soybeans,
beef cattle, until I was 21, then I joined the Air Force for 30
years, and that transformation over that 30 years is just
incredible.
When I was 20 years old driving on a tractor discing, my
main concern was finding an AM radio station and trying to find
a good baseball game for something to keep me amused. Today we
have GPS on almost every piece of equipment. Our combines are
pumping out maintenance data all over, yield data. Our
irrigation systems know what part of the fields need more
concentration than others.
I was just at a ranch with 75,000 head of cattle. Every
trough was computerized, every water tank, and based on the age
of the cattle, different blends of feed. It was mainly
computerized. Every head of cattle they had to analyze, so to
maximize the output for each head of cattle.
I just find it incredible where we have gone. I clearly see
a need for broadband and big data. And I have seen different
estimates what it is going to cost to fully put this out in our
rural communities.
Do any of you have a good estimate of what it will cost in
the end to really do a rural broadband system for our country?
A big question. What is the cost? Has anyone seen a good
estimate?
Mr. Tiller. I do want to say this. I wouldn't tackle that
one, but back in the day when I was sitting on a
telecommunication board when Internet was new, we took a poll
of the board. We said: ``Who is going to want this?'' And I can
remember some of the older guys on the board: ``Nobody.'' And I
was one of the guys who said: ``Well, I want it.'' We thought
out of the 1,800 alliance subscribers that maybe 100 would want
it. Look what happened today, they all want it. And they don't
want what? They don't want that little pipe carrying 2,400
baud, they want a big pipe.
What it is going to cost today it is hard to say, because
technology is going to keep wanting more. It is going to have
to feed the beast. But if we want to be effective, efficient,
and productive, we have to do that. I don't know the cost, but
I know it is necessary.
Mr. Bacon. I just think it is probably good to start big
picture. What is the cost to get broadband out there, and then
we could strategize how to get there.
Now, you touched on this a little bit. What can we do in
the farm bill to make some progress there? You touched on it a
little bit, but I just want to make sure we have clarity. Is
there a way to partner with states and local governments and
private industry? Because obviously people are going to make
money on this as well, so it shouldn't be totally a Federal
cost. But any thoughts on that? And I just open it up to the
floor, because I am earnestly seeking answers here.
Mr. Janzen. Perhaps grants to State Departments of
Agriculture. I know, like in Indiana, we always hear about
rural broadband and the need for that. And perhaps with some
incentive money in a future farm bill, that would be enough to
push those states to invest.
Mr. Bacon. Incentives.
Mr. Janzen. Yes. And I don't know the cost either of what
this would be to make America's farms connected. But I have to
think, when you look back in history, every major investment we
have made in rural infrastructure has paid dividends for
generations, rural water, rural electric, roads. I think this
is the next big one.
Mr. Bacon. If we get the broadband put out, I don't foresee
that changing as much. The applications riding within it will
change, clearly. If you get the infrastructure in getting to
your point, Mr. Tiller, that the applications within it will
change. But we need to get the infrastructure in place. I am
just trying to figure out the best way to do it. I don't know
if it is strictly a private endeavor or if there is a
partnership there. I think there should be probably some kind
of partnership.
Mr. Tiller. The USF fund, that has been a private-public
partnership all this time. I remember back in the day, I was on
a farm board from 1986 really up to 2004. It is needed. I mean,
that is that private-public partnership that goes on to make
those things work.
Bringing lending in different ways, through RUS, through
the different funding mechanisms, that is the way you do it. I
don't think the government would just go out and say: ``How do
we take that?'' It would be these private partnerships.
Mr. Bacon. I will just close. When I get feedback going
around, I am from the Omaha district, so I have a county and a
half, more urban than suburban. We have some farms on the west
and north side and southwest and so forth. But we have a huge
agri-industry, a lot of processing commodities and, I mean,
transportation.
But I get out a lot in Nebraska to learn on this, and the
first issue is affordable crop insurance, I hear it all over.
Second, foot-and-mouth disease concerns, what would happen,
having an insurance plan there. Infrastructure, which is tied
to broadband, is probably the fourth issue I hear. I think that
is a common thing I hear.
Anyway, thank you for your time.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
The Chairman. The gentleman yields back.
Ms. Plaskett, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Plaskett. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you all for being here.
I wanted to ask a couple of questions. We have had a really
good discussion on both sides of the aisle about this issue,
really coming at this in a bipartisan manner in how we can
address the issues of broadband in rural areas.
It is interesting, because yesterday the Committee held a
hearing about innovations in the specialty crop industry, but
much of the discussion today is around commodity crops. And so
one of the questions I have, and this is to any of the
witnesses, how can technologies that you work with help fruit
and vegetable growers? And are there unique benefits of data
technology and the discussion we have about increased broadband
technology for specialty crops?
Mr. Royse. I would like to just offer, one of the comments
one of the panelists made, it is very true, is these
technologies really do translate. And we see a lot of tech that
originates in California in the specialty crop area, and almost
immediately it is across the country. It is out in the
commodity crops.
In a way my viewpoint is that these are technologies that
are going to be useful across a lot of different crops,
especially the data.
Ms. Casurella. What I would add to that is production
agriculture, your row crops, is very different than your
fruits, nuts, and trees in terms of how I would apply
technology. If I were looking at fruits, nuts, and trees, I
would focus more on your aerial imagery. I mean, the technology
is such that you can count the number of tomato plants in a
field very accurately using the automation, whether it is 3 to
5 meter imagery or drones.
The application of technology will vary, depending on the
crops, but I also agree you can try to cross. But you are not
going to put a tractor in an area where you are counting your
trees and your fruit on those trees.
Aerial imagery and some of those kinds of things are far
more expensive than the production agriculture, but there are a
lot of pretty neat things that are happening, I will call it,
in garages and homes and those kinds of things, but not a lot
that, as Billy said, is good for mainstream specialty growers.
Ms. Plaskett. I know that you were talking before about
fertilizer and the time in which to put that. I think that, for
specialty crop growers, that is an issue as well.
In the Virgin Islands we go from drought to heavy rains.
And having technology to help the farmer support irrigation
issues, which are really important for them, and how to
regulate that would be something that this technology would be
supportive of as well.
Ms. Casurella. Yes. And there, you may want to start with
sensors, soil sensors, and moisture flow as a pretty simple
Internet-connected device to collect a lot of data.
Ms. Plaskett. I know that our extension, the University of
the Virgin Islands, the extension is doing a lot in terms of
sensors. But the technology probably isn't going to come from
the extension. It is going to come from other high-tech places
and then being able to apply those or something that would be
really helpful.
My other question is for Mr. Tiller. We were talking about
cooperatives. You noted that cooperatives are trying methods
for farmers to come together to find greater market power, and
you have been doing some work with farmers to do this in the ag
data market.
Could you explain how the Grower Information Service
Cooperative is positioned to draw value for farmer members, and
how would patronage return be generated from aggregated farm
data?
Mr. Tiller. That is a good question, and the reason it is a
good question is today it hasn't been done. I always tell
growers, let's be simple. Let's start out with what I call
collect and store. Let's don't get too far down the road,
because until we get the data into place where we can do
something with it. Because I always sort of chuckle when this
farm group says: ``We are doing all this stuff with data.'' And
I always say: ``What data?'' They probably don't have much
data, because it has been very difficult to bring in and
collect.
We want to use the platform initially so farmers would have
a place to store that data. And then they could begin to share
that with their agronomist, with people that work with their
data, not looking at big data initially, doing simple things to
create small data that would be actionable for their farms.
An example would be in the vegetable industry, et cetera,
we want to work there and here is why. I have groups from all
over the world that call me about this data cooperative. And I
have said: ``I can't see why we can't franchise this same idea,
same platform, to create data communities. Because if you only
have 80 or 90 growers, you don't really want to set up a
cooperative, wherever that is at, and try to get into all the
technicalities and the cost, but set up a data community.'' And
we are trying to work with some groups right now of how that
might look and be managed, managed on a similar platform to
ours.
So today I would say collect, store, but we have to
analyze. Stored data is not worth anything to the farmer if we
don't make a decision with it. I have sort of reached a point
where sometimes in the industry there are groups that say:
``Really, we don't want it shared outside of here because we
don't really want anything else done with it.'' That doesn't
work for a grower. I have to be able to make decisions with
that data.
Ms. Plaskett. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. The gentlelady yields back.
The gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Gibbs, is recognized for 5
minutes.
Mr. Gibbs. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
First, I would make a couple of comments on broadband, the
need in the rural area, absolutely, definitely. I don't know if
that means, broadband means more fiber, more cell towers, I
don't know how that interrelates.
But I can tell you, working with one of my local companies
in my district, fiber has come down, is cheaper now than
coaxial cable. And this cable company, it is a privately owned
company in several of my counties, is running fiber to every
residence on their customer base. And the technology, how it
all works, I had an interesting morning that day, I learned a
lot.
But I wanted to know, Mr. Tiller, your cooperative that you
started, you say you have 1,400 members, when Mr. Royse talks
about privacy, security, and ownership, what are your
cooperative rules? How do you handle it? Because you would be
like the miniature scale compared to nationally.
Mr. Tiller. Well, we are still learning, but that is why I
am so staunch about this. I appreciated Mr. Royse's comments
that ownership is a complex issue. But when I am talking to a
grower, they want to know that their data is within the
contractual rights of the co-op they own the data that is
placed in there. They could be part of aggregated data sets and
they would be anonymized. But they would own that data. They
could take their data at any point.
Mr. Gibbs. What was that?
Mr. Tiller. They could take their the data, it is portable.
They would move it.
Now, what could they do with it? That is the problem today.
A lot of groups tell us: ``You can take your data. But if you
can't do anything with it when you leave, and you really can't
take it in a format that you can really put it into something
else, you haven't left with a lot.''
The beauty of this is, this is just a group of growers
deciding what they want to do. If other growers want to join in
that effort along those rules of understanding that; it is an
evolving thing. Where we are at today won't be where we are at
in 2 or 3 years. I believe we will have data sets that will be
valuable to growers around benchmarking within the next 2 to 3
years.
Mr. Gibbs. And your 1,400 members, I am kind of assuming
they are all different levels of capabilities.
Mr. Tiller. They are all different crops, all different
levels.
Mr. Gibbs. Levels being able to collect data and how they
are using the data, right?
Mr. Tiller. Yes. I have farmers that joined the co-op that
literally, they might have one tractor on their farm out of
five that are using GPS. And I have asked them in the
conversation, ``What made you want to join the co-op?'' Even
some that don't even have that. And they are looking for the
co-op to even be an educational force for them.
I don't know what to do around data. We have always solved
problems in ag, kind of joining together. There was a thought
around that. We have had members join at that level.
And then I wish the gentleman from Nebraska was still here.
One of my most astute growers, Roric Paulman, out of Nebraska,
I mean, this guy employs more technology. I learn more about
how to employ technology when I go to his farm than anyplace I
have ever seen. My example is, you are right, it is a spectrum.
But it is all crops, too.
Mr. Gibbs. Now, kind of an another thought. Data is
collected, and let's say it is flying pesticide, herbicides, or
fertilizer, whatever. What are your thoughts about a government
agency being able to come in? For one aspect, a producer could
use as protection: I have the actual records here, blah, blah,
blah. But the other side, say the EPA or whatever. Has that
conversation ever come up?
Mr. Tiller. That conversation comes up a lot. You are from
Ohio, you may know John Fulton, Ohio State. Those are
conversations we have had with him because he is academia,
doing research, taking grant money. I am very concerned that
when there is grant money involved it might be FOIAble. And a
grower might not want that data out there. Not doing anything
wrong, just wants his privacy looked at in that way.
At the co-op we think about that. We have never looked to
take grants or bring in any dollars like that, we have used
private money to fund us, because we do want to be a separate
database owned by growers where they own this individually.
Mr. Gibbs. That is one aspect, from that aspect. I am
thinking about another aspect of being able to come in and, I
guess, subpoena you, or a search warrant.
Mr. Tiller. Well, I guess that can happen. Let's use some
examples of things that are out in the tech industry like Box,
Dropbox, these places that store data. If that could happen to
us, it could happen to them.
I think that is a much larger issue than in ag because we
have tried to remain totally separate and private for those
very reasons. We have had growers concerned about that, to be
honest. I mean, what would keep EPA from wanting to just
subpoena my records around if I am in a watershed and if we
stored them there.
And those are things that we are trying to work through now
as we talk to growers, so there is a lot of caution being put
there. But at the same time there is so much to be garnered
when farmer's data are controlled and understanding that data
so we can do the right things. We are good stewards of the
land.
Mr. Gibbs. I agree with that. It is a question of we have
to be able to answer some of these questions so farmers have
more confidence to do this.
I yield back.
The Chairman. The gentlemen yields.
Mr. Dunn is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Dunn. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Let me start by saying, I am not a framer, unlike General
Bacon, who was sitting here to my right, and I didn't grow up
on a farm. And I am fascinated by the sheer penetrance of
information technology on today's farms. You hear about rural
broadband, and you think: Oh, people want TV out in the small
towns, too. No, that is not what they are talking about.
I am really, really impressed. We have a very agrarian
district, a lot of farmers, 300 miles across. It is the number
one economic activity in my district. And I am learning a lot
about farming very quickly.
Let me ask, Mr. Tiller, I will start with you, first
question. There are large swaths of my district that do not
have broadband. What happened to these farmers who just at this
point in time, and maybe going forward for a while, don't have
access to broadband?
Mr. Tiller. There are ways to collect data without
broadband. You can actually store it on the phone, sync it
later.
Mr. Dunn. Walk the fields.
Mr. Tiller. That is right. You do exactly what you have
been doing. But my whole point, that is why we have to get
there.
Mr. Dunn. But they can't compete as well, and they like to
export, too. There are some pretty big farms.
Mr. Tiller. That is right. It is something you need to
address. I mean, I am speaking for those farmers. I know they
want better access to the technology of broadband. It is that
simple.
Mr. Dunn. I have spent a fair amount of time in the space
launch programs, and I can tell you they want to put a lot of
low Earth orbit satellites out there that they say will cover
these areas. I don't know. I also spent a lot of time trying to
get fiber out there. In fact, one of our space launch
consortiums was making fiber in space for telecoms and then
sending it back to Earth to plant in the ground. It is a
confusing world.
I do want to address the gentleman from Ohio's question
about privacy of data, though. I think that that is really
interesting. We get it that you can own your data, but your
data has already been shared with some big growers consortium
perhaps, or not, or not. But is your data private from, let's
just say, the IRS?
Mr. Tiller. Well, it is at this point. You would know that
better than me. I mean, you all are making the rules. At this
point I haven't had those----
Mr. Dunn. That is a rule that would interest you?
Mr. Tiller. That is where I am going to rely on you all to
actually not protect just the farmers, you are going to want to
protect everyone from those sorts of concerns.
Mr. Dunn. But what are the privacy issues in agriculture,
the secret issues? Are there secret competition issues?
Mr. Tiller. That is never really the concern. Farmers,
right now they are not even putting the data in a warehouse
where it could be used.
And I find that privacy is a concern. For most of them it
is not the greatest concern. They want to know: If I want to
share it, who can I share it with? They want to make sure they
control those aspects. We are trying to really build a platform
where they will have that control.
The main concern farmers have is: How easily can I get it
there? What value do I really have once it is there? Is there
anything that can be done with it? Those are things that are
important today, they weren't as important 5 years ago, but
today that is the question. Most of them because they have seen
all the social media, how things go, so they are more
comfortable around data. But they want to know what value. If I
put effort and time and money, what do I garner when I get to
the end of the day?
Mr. Dunn. I will say, in closing, that no conversation with
a farmer in my district ends without some comment about access
to broadband. And that, of course, is much more acute out in
the farm country. And we want to be sure we address that in the
farm bill, and we want to be sure that you help us address it
properly.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you.
And I recognize the gentlelady from Delaware for 5 minutes.
Ms. Blunt Rochester. Thank you. And excuse me for having to
step out for a moment.
This issue is one that is probably really important and
exciting to me, especially in my home State of Delaware. I had
an opportunity to go around with some of our farmers and use
some of their technology and see what is happening. And so
hopefully my questions that I am interested in haven't already
been asked.
But one of the things that I was interested in is, I heard
as I walked in about the issue of broadband, and right now
there seems to be, just like in the past with the digital
divide, you have sometimes those who get access to new
technologies and others who don't.
I am curious about whether you think the cost of some of
this technology, when we can expect to see it become more
available to a broader group of individuals, whether they are
farmers that have great big companies versus the family farmer.
Can you talk a little bit about accessibility and kind of
bridging that divide?
Mr. Royse. I will jump in just for a minute on one part of
this. And that is, I am seeing that the cost of the devices is
going down tremendously over the last 5 years. It is becoming
very affordable and accessible.
And you are absolutely right, cost is a very big issue with
farms, a lot of which are very low margin businesses. And cost
was a gating factor early on. But, that problem is being
solved, at least at the device level, with regard to the
Federal cost. The government cost of building the superhighways
and the access, that I don't know.
Mr. Janzen. I wanted to add that we are still at a place
where farmers are trying to sort out what is the return on
investment when they upload their data to all these cloud-based
platforms. Right now most farmers are still paying to store
their data in the cloud.
But, the long-term hope is that eventually that value
proposition flips and we start to see farmers getting paid to
upload their data, because the companies are getting so much
value out of that, that it is worth returning some of that
investment back to farmers. And so that will bring the costs of
these services down for farmers as well.
Ms. Blunt Rochester. Got you.
When you gave your testimony earlier, I heard different
things about trust, about fear, some of the different concerns
about who owns the data. And I guess my question would be, we
have seen that the technology has been growing, but we have
also heard some of the challenges.
Can you each identify what you would say is the one major
concern that you have in making use of the new technologies? If
you had just one thing that really is that major concern, what
would it be?
And we can start with Mr. Royse.
Mr. Royse. Well, okay. I would like to come back to the
privacy issue, because I want you to imagine a scenario where
somebody walks into my office and they say: ``I have this new
technology. It is going to sit on a drone and it is going to
gather yield data of a farm.'' Or maybe financially, I am going
to figure out how profitable that farm is.
And then I am going the take that data and I am going to go
sell it to the companies that sell the inputs to the farm
because they know how profitable the farm is. And by the way,
in California a lot of the farm land is leased. Maybe I will go
sell it to one of that farmer's neighbors so he can come and he
knows what that farm is worth. Or maybe I will sell it back to
the owner of the land.
I think there really is a privacy issue here. Now, we deal
with that, of course, through contracts, and in California we
have this concept of personally identifiable information. But
when I hear about trust issues, that is kind of the first thing
I think about. It is not the only thing, but it is the first
thing I think about.
Ms. Blunt Rochester. I have 50 seconds.
Ms. Casurella. Yes. What growers are most concerned with
producers are two things. One is if they use their precision ag
data, the data collected on their tractor for reporting, is the
government going to get more than the government is supposed to
get?
What is on that card, what is in that data could be their
seed planted in the ground and an as-applied fertilizer
application. They only want to share the seed, they don't want
to share the variety and the type. If it is corn and it is
planted on this field with this parameter, they are happy to
share that because it is required. They don't want anything
else to go.
The challenge is, how do you enable the use of the data
without disclosing more than is required?
Ms. Blunt Rochester. Thank you.
Nine seconds.
Mr. Janzen. My big concern is that farmers understand the
contracts they are signing up for.
Ms. Blunt Rochester. Got you. Thank you.
Mr. Tiller. I would just reiterate, collaboration of all
the things we have talked about, going back to when Mr. Royse
was talking about literally even the drones. Let's take it from
there even to the data level. If I shared data like Todd is
talking about with a third-party company, do I understand what
is going to happen to that data? Is it going to stay there? Are
they going to share it with affiliates? Are those affiliates
going to try to sell things to me based on what they learned?
Ms. Blunt Rochester. Thank you. My time has expired.
The Chairman. The gentlelady's time has expired.
I recognize the gentleman from Georgia for 5 minutes.
Mr. Allen. Thank you, Chairman.
And thank you for sharing with us.
Obviously, technology is critical to the continued
operation of our farming industry. And, of course, we have made
tremendous strides. And, of course, you all have been a part of
that and I appreciate all your efforts in making these things
work.
We are working through the farm bill, the next farm bill.
And in the 2014 Farm Bill, it was clear that USDA should allow
producers or an agent of a producer to report data, including
geospatial data, electronically or conventionally, to the
Department. This provision was designed to reduce the
administrative burdens and costs for producers.
Ms. Casurella, do you have some insight on why this is not
being done?
Ms. Casurella. I am not even sure where to start. First, it
is the----
Mr. Allen. Well, we have 3 minutes and 55 seconds.
Ms. Casurella. Okay. First, it is the uncertainty; well,
no, first, the farmer doesn't even know it is happening to
them. If you are going into the FSA or you are going to your
crop insurance agent and the FSA sends the data, the crop
insurance--and the crop insurance data through their crop
insurance company sends the data to the FSA, the producer
doesn't know it is happening.
They also don't know it is incomplete data. And the whole
farming industry is conditioned to have data match. When they
go into the FSA county office and they get their form 578 and
they report 32.78 acres, that equals their CLU. And then they
go into their crop insurance acres and report 31.2 acres of
insurable acres for their crop insurance.
If there is a GAO audit or a compliance or a claim, what
are valid acres? Is it the acres that they reported in crop
insurance, that are probably the acres that they planted in the
field, or the acres that they certified in FSA? I mean, there
are still so much confusion on the impact to a farmer, the
impact on the FSA program.
If I report accurately, do my base acres change? Well, not
in this farm bill. But will they in the next one?
Mr. Allen. That is why we are talking about it. Again, we
are working on the next farm bill.
Ms. Casurella. Yes.
Mr. Allen. And we need to get this solved.
Do you or any of the panel have any idea how we can solve
this issue?
Ms. Casurella. I will say one thing. Let the farmers plant
the acres they plant. Let the farmers report the acres they
plant. It doesn't have to be farm tract field. It doesn't have
to be common land unit. And let the government figure out then,
if I plant a boundary and it covers 3 CLUs or within 1 CLU,
come up with the rules for how to handle that data.
But don't make the government report with boundaries that
are set anywhere from 5 to 25 years ago that maximize producer
benefits. Let the farmers report what they report, and give the
agency the dollars to be able to adapt the program to collect
actual data.
Mr. Allen. Okay. Thank you so much for your feedback.
Any other comments regarding that problem from the other
members.
All right. I have just a minute. It is my understanding
that the NRCS, which is the Natural Resources Conservation
Service within the USDA, is coordinating well with the 3D
Elevation Program, or 3DEP. And my question is to everyone on
this panel. How can USDA best leverage elevation data via these
standard mapping technologies, such as LiDAR, to maximize farm
management decisions? Does it go back to this same issue?
Mr. Tiller. You were saying elevations.
Mr. Allen. Right.
Mr. Tiller. Repeat the question. I had trouble hearing you.
Mr. Allen. It is where the NRCS service within the USDA is
coordinating with the 3D Elevation Program within the U.S.
Geological Survey in the Department of the Interior--in short,
3DEP is the nationwide LiDAR, L-i-D-A-R Program, in its
enhanced elevation data. And my question is, how can the USDA
best leverage that elevation data to make it available?
Mr. Tiller. Well, to make it available, maybe that could be
a public data set. I would love to be able to pull that in to
have that elevation data. As tractors are going through the
field with the GPS on them, we get elevation data, too.
Mr. Allen. Okay.
Mr. Tiller. With that elevation data, you could actually do
a lot to really check where you are at. Deb or one of the
others might have a better feel for it. I don't really know the
value yet. There are people around me that might. I don't feel
like I could really get----
Mr. Allen. Well, that is the concern that has been voiced
to my office. I think it goes back with trying to solve this in
the next farm bill.
And, Mr. Chairman, I am out of time, I yield back. Thank
you so much.
The Chairman. The gentleman yields.
The gentleman from Florida is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Lawson. Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity.
The biggest problem that I have is the way it happened in
Congress is trying to do two or three meetings at the same time
and read on my way coming here. I want to thank the Committee.
I want to thank you all for being here. And I know that you
already discussed the issue regarding the lack of broadband.
But my question is different. Here in north Florida there
is the issue with the lack of rural broadband and access. Can
you elaborate on how the lack of rural broadband hinders the
implementation of telematics among farmers and regions? Can
anyone?
Mr. Tiller. I would just reiterate for you, what it is
boiling down to is this. Everything that is out there that
really is trying to stream data through telematics into the
cloud is going to need to use the broadband that is out there,
the cell signal, or other things that could be put in place.
Unless those are there, it is going to affect long-term the
productivity and efficiency of our farms.
There has to be an effort, because we may not get the
private investment because they are not sure of the payback.
But once it is there in its entirety, because the problem is,
if you just do a little area, you are not going to get it, but
if it is there in its entirety, and that is where you need the
government. I think that is where you create those private-
public partnerships with the industry that is out there
building telecommunications, because once it is all there the
value to the United States is going to be tremendous.
I think that is what we have to understand. All this cloud
that we talk about, it doesn't have any data unless we bring it
from that dirt, the sensors stuck in the dirt, we have to get
it there. And there is no technology to get it there, I mean,
other than me capturing the data off it with a USB stick, going
to it. But we will never implement those technologies, there
has to be ease in the automation.
Mr. Royse. Sir, I would like to add that there are, as was
mentioned, there are alternatives to broadband to capturing
data, but they tend to be labor intensive, and we have one heck
of a labor shortage out in California.
And we are not going to be able to use it, there is the
labor shortage that broadband helps address. But also the fact
that the more we can take humans out of the equation and make
this more automated and more machine based, the more reliable
the data is going to be. There are some ancillary concerns to
this.
Ms. Casurella. What I will add to that is, right now it
takes a technician to get the data. I will use an example of a
farm in Illinois. It is all enabled with technology sensors,
everything else, and the only time they are connected is when
that tractor ends up back in the shed, they turn on their
mobile device and stream that data. It is all after the fact.
And it is there, it is just really hard to get at, and
again, takes a technician to figure out how to get the data
anywhere, it is complicated, instead of letting the sensors
talk to the cloud, which provides the information to the
producer.
Mr. Janzen. And I would add as well that it is not just a
matter of some farmers in the United States not being connected
and others being connected. We should always keep in mind that
our farmers are operating in a global market and other
countries are making these investments in rural broadband so
their farmers have a competitive advantage. And we need to make
sure that all of our farmers have that same advantage here when
they put goods out on the world market.
Mr. Lawson. I have little time left, but I wanted to say
one thing. When you mentioned about California, about the labor
shortage, are other countries experiencing the same kind of
problem that California would be, experiencing a shortage of
the labor market?
Mr. Royse. Are other countries experiencing? I don't know,
but I do know that other countries, and we could talk a long
time about what is going on in other countries. And we do a lot
of work with China, India, and I was just recently in the
Middle East, and they are in a race to implement technologies,
including broadband, because they don't have the kind of
agricultural infrastructure that the United States has. Other
countries are becoming very automated very quickly.
Mr. Lawson. Well, that is amazing.
Mr. Chairman, with that, I yield back.
The Chairman. The gentleman yields back.
I recognize the gentleman from Texas for 5 minutes.
Mr. Dunn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I echo the sentiments from my colleague, Mr. Lawson,
there are just too many things happening at the same time. My
apologies, especially if I repeat questions or comments that
have already been made. I certainly want to thank all the
panelists for being here and for your insight.
Utilizing data analytics, Billy, we talked about prior to
this hearing, is a best practice across all industries. And I
don't know that the ag industry, certainly ag producers, are
fully utilizing those, and no telling what the gap is in terms
of productivity and efficiency that we can gain.
But there is the question of who owns the data. You
mentioned that. It is frustrating for you, why shouldn't the
producer own that data.
What is government's role in being a data repository? I
want the government in a very limited role. I want unleashing
the market forces because that is where innovation happens. I
don't think it happens a lot in the Federal Government. But the
Federal Government has a role. Define that for me with respect
to data.
Mr. Tiller. Well, I am going to keep it simple. The role
has to remain in the private-sector of how we store the data,
who owns it, because it is going to get too complex.
And I really think that most things work best when
innovators innovate, and that is what has to happen. We can't
have rules to make that happen.
But I am going to say that the role that could really be
played is how we interact with land-grant universities, how we
interact with research that is going on, and how that data
could be used. I mean, farmers are in fear of that becoming
FOIAble, and all they are trying to do is help in a research
project.
That could be something you all could address, so that
farmers could be part of a research project, help get to the
real answers at the bottom, and not get in trouble just because
they are trying to help others, because they might not even
know they were wrong in what they have done.
I have heard stories out of California where somebody was
plowing some ground and got into a multimillion dollar lawsuit
or something, and it is all because he shared some data. That
makes farmers fearful. They are like, I would rather not play
at all.
The role has to be extremely limited. I think be very
cautious. I would just caution, just like you said, just a
little bit. We might need a little help and guidance.
And I don't have an answer how we bring that together. We
just have to continue to innovate, encourage the producers to
really work with groups like ours. If they want to digitally
report like Deb's tool there, any way that you all could
innovate that, there are cost savings to the government out of
things like that.
Mr. Dunn. I can only imagine, as a bank board member,
watching the burden and experiencing the burden of data
collection that the government puts as a requirement because of
deposit insurance and their regulatory role. I can appreciate
why some would be very concerned about that, but someone has to
have it.
And I agree with you, if you are going to innovate and you
are going to manage effectively, the co-op idea, is really a
brilliant idea.
This is for other panelists, and, Billy, please weigh in if
you have an idea on this, but, in my role at Texas Tech, trying
to bring research to market, ideas, to transfer them to
something that will make a difference in people's lives, this
is the value proposition for R&D at the Federal Government. I
am a big believer in it. It has made us competitive, more
competitive than we would be otherwise without that investment.
But it is a very difficult endeavor to have early stage
technology from government R&D to move through the process. You
have to have the good idea that is patentable, marketable. You
have to have capital, that is venture capital, angel investors,
and other early stage money. And then you need to have
entrepreneurs.
How do we make that a more efficient and a more successful
proposition? Because taxpayers really get that. Some of this
fundamental research, which I believe that basic science is
important, too, but the applied and the transferred technology
out of research, every taxpayer gets that, from Google to the
Gatorade to all these things that have benefited us.
Tell me how we improve on that on this side of the ledger.
Mr. Royse. If I may offer a few comments.
Mr. Dunn. Please. Yes.
Then I am going to yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Royse. I know that Mr. Tiller doesn't like it when I
use the word disruptive, but I will tell you that I have seen
lots of very disruptive things. And just in business generally,
that happens mostly at the startup level. I mean, big
companies, publicly traded, they have shareholders to report
to, they are not likely to swing for the fences like our small
startup companies are, to come up with some really, truly game-
changing technologies. Anything that encourages startup
companies is good for innovation.
In my written comments I submitted a couple of proposals, I
know it is not this Committee's purview, on some tax incentives
that I think would go a long ways.
In terms of what the USDA can do, this trust issue is a
real issue, it is a real thing between the tech companies and
the farming community. And what is government's role? It should
assume that traditional role of removing bad actors from the
marketplace in order that we can have an atmosphere of a little
more trust.
And we have a good model in the FTC Act. We just don't have
an enforcement mechanism, that I am aware of, that applies to
agriculture.
That is one thing that I think the Committee might want to
consider.
The Chairman. The gentleman's time has expired.
And before we adjourn, I would like to recognize the
Ranking Member for any closing comments he might have.
Mr. Nolan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I just want to thank the panel. It has been very revealing
how important technology is for agriculture and the future of
agriculture, and our ability to feed the world and to continue
to grow and prosper. And I just want to thank each and every
one of you.
And thank you, Mr. Chairman, for bringing in this really
outstanding panel, we get a lot of panels here, but this is one
of the really outstanding panels that we have had. And I
commend to all of our colleagues and anybody interested in food
and agricultural policy to take the opportunity to read through
their testimony. It is just excellent. Thank you so much.
The Chairman. I thank my friend from Minnesota.
And I will close. I just want to share a few observations
and thoughts real quick.
One of the recurring themes that we have heard, not only in
this hearing, but in some listening sessions and prior
hearings, was the need for broadband. And, obviously, that is
going to continue to be a recurring theme.
Just thinking out loud here, we need to identify the key
players from a technology standpoint, who can deliver and who
can deliver and address changing technologies on the fly,
first.
Second, who has the infrastructure to reach rural America,
identify those.
And then, third, financing this. How do we do that? How big
of a role, as you mentioned, how big of a role should the
government play? Or should we be looking at public-private
partnerships?
But I view this kind of like a three-legged stool. The
technology is a big part of it. The infrastructure. Access,
getting that technology delivered to the folks that need it.
And then finally, the third piece of the pie here, the third
leg of the three-legged stool, is financing. How do we pay for
it? And that is going to be a struggle that we have to work
toward collectively.
Big data, addressing any concerns, as we have talked about
the privacy concerns, some of the skepticism that is inherent
in agriculture, particularly where the government overlap takes
place. The legal, ethical concerns, those privacy issues.
And then you mentioned this, Mr. Janzen, it is a marketable
commodity, it really is. There is value in that data. How does
the farmer realize the market potential to help improve his
bottom line? There is definitely merit in exploring that and
how you can monetize that data while protecting and
safeguarding their privacy issues and things of that nature.
And then, finally, something that didn't come up, but just
briefly, you may have touched on this, drone use, and how folks
are using that and acquiring data through drones, how they are
using this on their farms.
Folks are so innovative and creative out there. I have a
group in my district that they are creating drones and
different applications so fast that it is 4 months down the
road this one becomes obsolete because they are advancing so
quickly on the applications that they are finding for using
unmanned aerial vehicles. And it becomes an issue with the FAA
and FCC, potentially.
These are some things that we have to explore, and big data
is the key and at the heart of that.
I just would associate myself with the comments that Mr.
Nolan made. This is a great panel. And we begun a conversation
here, but we didn't even scratch the surface on what the
potential is for big data and how we can plug farmers into it
in a more meaningful way.
Thank you for being here.
Under the Rules of the Committee, the record of today's
hearing will remain open for 10 calendar days to receive
additional material and supplementary written responses from
the witnesses to any question posed by a Member.
This hearing of the Subcommittee on General Farm
Commodities and Risk Management is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:31 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
[all]