Big data ethics and the digital age of agriculture

New policies, analytics, security, and management techniques will be required to handle the terabytes of big data coming from crop fields, as the industry enters the digital age of agriculture. It will take collaboration between producers, agriculture technology providers (ATPs), and agricultural and biological engineers to ensure that ethical, consistent principles are established during the transition to digital agriculture. There should be a common standard of agreement between ATPs and producers to limit confusion about each independent ATP’s rules regarding data privacy, use, and ownership.