“Who Controls Farmer Data? FarmMind CEO Says Farm Bill Provision Leaves a Gap”

Context

On Agriculture of America, Raby takes up a question he says gets less attention than it deserves as AI and precision agriculture spread across American farms: who controls the data those tools collect?

His concern is a gap in the farm bill. Both the Senate and House versions raise EQIP and CSP cost share to 90% for adopting precision agriculture technology, which he called "an incredible provision," but one with "a pretty dramatic flaw": it doesn't gate which providers farmers can use. Elsewhere, the bill's section 12610 includes a "trusted provider" standard that bars funds from going to known national security threats; the cost-share provision has no such language.

Raby sorts agricultural software into three groups: the few companies that give growers real data privacy, domestic companies that protect data within their ecosystems but still own and profit from it, and non-trusted providers. In the last group he named Syngenta's CropWise platform, noting that Syngenta was acquired by ChemChina.

Data ownership, he argued, is also an opportunity. "You can't have a marketplace if you don't own what you're selling." Under FarmMind's policy, any request for a grower's data goes to the grower first, who decides whether to keep it private or monetize it.

Asked whether agriculture is moving too fast on AI, Raby said the opposite. "Every single year that farmers don't have these tools, we are going to lose operations." He suggested farmers ask any AI provider four questions: can I export my data in a standard format, does it work with all providers, who gets paid if my data is sold, and can I say no. He also pointed farmers to incentives: FarmMind, he said, does better when more farmers stay in business.

He closed with an appeal to lawmakers to make sure EQIP and CSP money can only be spent with trusted providers, "so that American agricultural data isn't going to folks who will use it against them."