Monsanto Pitches Standards for Farm Data

By Jacob Bunge 

Monsanto Co. on Friday said it supported industrywide standards for managing information collected from farmers' fields, seeking to tamp down concerns among farmers over who will control the flow of farm data.

Officials for the St. Louis-based seed company backed a uniform format for such data and said the company is developing a free, online storage system for information ranging from crop yields to planting dates. Monsanto said its view is that farmers own the data generated by their businesses.

"We want to be clear with the farmer about what we intend to do with the data," said David Friedberg, who heads Monsanto's data-services businesses. "We know we need to earn our customers' trust."

Monsanto's farm-data proposals come as the agricultural industry grapples with privacy and intellectual-property questions raised by a raft of new services that use data analysis to inform planting and farm management.

Seed and chemical companies like Monsanto, DuPont Co. and Dow Chemical Co. are developing data-mining services that analyze information collected by farmers and their machinery and provide recommendations around seeding fields and spraying chemicals, for a fee. In November Monsanto paid $930 million to acquire the Climate Corp., which Mr. Friedberg founded, to bolster the seed company's data offerings.

The prospect of sharing intimate details of their operations with the companies has raised concerns with some farmers who are worried that the companies could tap the information for their own purposes or sell it to other entities, like commodity traders. Monsanto officials said they were working with other companies and farmers to develop industrywide practices to address those concerns.

Mr. Friedberg, speaking on a conference call with reporters, said Monsanto wouldn't sell farmers' data to third parties, and would secure permission before using the information to develop new services. Agreeing an industrywide format for the data would help transport it more easily among various software systems, if farmers choose to do so, he said.

Monsanto aims to build a free, online data storehouse where farmers can upload such information, which Mr. Friedberg said should help farmers become more comfortable with sharing their data online. The company won't access that data without farmers' OK, he said.

The American Farm Bureau Federation, which has raised concerns over the past year over how farmers' data could be used and shared by companies, supported Monsanto's proposals.

"We are encouraged that agribusinesses are taking our clear policy position into consideration," Farm Bureau officials said in a statement.

A spokeswoman for DuPont said that the company abides by data-privacy laws and agreed "in principle" with Monsanto's proposals, but urged farmers "to always read and understand the terms and conditions of any services they sign up for as each company maintains its own policies and provisions."

Write to Jacob Bunge at [e-mail]

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