On November 13, 2014, United States Farming groups like the American Farm Bureau, National Corn Growers Association, American Soybean Association, National Association of Wheat Growers, National Farmers Union and USA Rice Federation, signed a Data Security and Privacy Agreement with Large Agribusiness like Monsanto, DuPont Engineer, John Deere, and Dow AgroSciences and Raven Enterprises.
As mentioned here before in past posts, current farming implements gather data about fields and potential yields that implement and insurance companies can use against the farmers to learn more about their income based on the commodity yields.
This applies to GIS/Geomatics and UAVs when doing current (outside the United States) and future flights (inside and outside the United States) for data collection. GIS is already worked into current Precision Agriculture data analysis, which includes Meteorological Data, current and processed for different areas and scales.
As startup UAV companies mature the market or grow as divisions as current market leads, they will need to take agreements like this into consideration by being part to this agreement or negotiate separate agreements. I would expect industry standard boiler-plate agreements to become more common in future years.
As ABC Rural is publishing this, expect more agreements like this around the world, in Australia and beyond. Data privacy and security will only grow as a global issue in the future.
Internet access in rural areas continues to grow which will only expand this in the United States. Take this example of fiber being planned in south central Minnesota in the Sibley County area. Now they are reached by satellite, telephone modem, or the current fastest WiFi internet. The plan is to bring fiber to rural areas. This example of fiber optic cable to the farm should be operational by the end of 2015. With bandwidth like that, connected farms and data privacy and security issues will only grow.
