industry-executives/leake-brian-bayer-farmers-own-data

Quote / Position

“Farmers own their own data — full stop. They can choose to share their data with others and request that their individual farm data is deleted.”

Context

Bayer’s corporate framing of farmer-data ownership. The quote is real and worth knowing. But the operational reality, as captured in Civil Eats (March 2026), is partial — the Climate FieldView privacy statement explicitly says customers own their data, but the contractual language (e.g., anonymised data pool rights) can grant broad rights to vendors under Ag Data Transparent certified contracts. The quote should be presented alongside the practitioner reality (Nelson quote) for balance.

Source

Civil Eats (Elsa Wenzel). A Hidden Crop for Corporate Tech: Farm Data. March 23, 2026. https://civileats.com/2026/03/23/a-hidden-crop-for-corporate-tech-farm-data/ (Brian Leake quote as cited).