Opinion: The Dangers of Big Data Extend to Agriculture

13.07.2024 - 01:29 / modernfarmer.com

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Most internet users are by now aware of the vulnerability of their personal data. When the news broke that tech companies misuse and manipulate our personal data, there was a widespread “techlash” against the corporate giants Facebook, Amazon and Google.

The explicit motive for data harvesting is the prediction of consumer wants and needs. And scholars and activists have spent years exposing the dangerous effects of big data practices on individual privacy and civil liberties.

Researchers have also shown how biased big data and opaque artificial intelligence have reproduced racism, classism and many forms of inequity.

However less attention has been paid to agriculture firms such as Monsanto or John Deere. And yet, they are some of the largest, concentrated corporations in North America who increasingly center their profits on the collection, processing and sale of big data.

We should pay close attention. Agricultural big data are likely to have far-reaching detrimental environmental and social impacts.

Maximizing profits: The past as a road map

While farmers have used satellite weather data for decades, today’s big data practices are different. Data get collected by sensors built into farm machinery, called “precision” farm equipment. Then, corporate data scientists aggregate and “mine” these data for insights.

While there are benefits to farmers who buy the data-driven insights, there are clear and potentially incommensurate benefits for the corporations. Both the data-driven insights as well as the datasets are sources of profit for private firms.

We can infer what agribusinesses might do with big data based