Supporting data sharing to improve food security

A project that aims to improve the security of farm data will give farmers the confidence to share their data and will drive innovation to enhance the productivity of Australian agriculture, a Federation data governance specialist says.

Data Policy Manager at Federation's Centre for eResearch and Digital Innovation (CeRDI) Gabi Ceregra is working with the National Farmers Federation (NFF) and the Food Agility Cooperative Research Centre on two complimentary projects to develop and promote data-sharing initiatives to support Australia's food security.

The collaboration with the NFF has seen work to update the body's Farm Data Code – a code of conduct for technology providers to ensure agricultural data is managed according to farmers' wishes.

"What we want is for farmers to have the kinds of rights for farm business data that they have for personal data under the Privacy Act – and even to go beyond that with this code," Ms Ceregra said.

"There's much research happening in agriculture that requires farm data, and there are many reasons why farmers might not want to share their data, and trust is one of those reasons."

"This is about fostering trust with farmers to share their data while giving them that protection."

A 2017 report funded by the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources (DAWR) – Accelerating Precision Agriculture to Decision Agriculture – included a key component on the legal and ethical impacts of data and data governance and how these would affect the agriculture industry.

"The original Farm Data Code was commissioned by the government to show farmers that technology can be trusted when there are safeguards in place. What we really want is to increase the sharing of data but in a safe way."

The original code was published in February 2020, created by a working group of farmers, industry experts, technology company representatives and members of the NFF.

Ms Ceregra, whose background includes work as a business analyst and project manager, having used her data governance and software deployment skills in banking and health care, was tasked to refresh the code for a second edition while carrying out a review to make sure it was still relevant.

"We made some changes and it went back to the working group. We carried out community consultation and modernised some elements – we had to think about things like blockchain and other technologies that had started to pick up pace," she said.

Certification scheme

With the release of a second edition of the code, the NFF has also launched a certification scheme for technology providers to be assessed and certified against the code.

"There's a process that providers go through. There's a checklist that will list the work they need to do and be able to provide documents to support that," Ms Ceregra said.

Technology groups who apply to be providers will need to have their applications assessed by a panel of experts to see if they meet all the criteria to be certified. The process includes a desk-based audit evaluated by the panel that includes security experts, legal representatives, farmers and IT experts.

"If they don't get the 100 per cent pass that is required to be certified, they will still get an audit report that will be published on the NFF website. So the name of the game is, first of all, transparency," Ms Ceregra said.

"We know that few providers are going to meet the standard in the first year or two because we've set a higher standard – it's far above what is legally required and even above what the Privacy Act affords to individuals right now. Our goal is to educate and improve provider data management practices over time."

"We're really setting the bar higher to give farmers more protections around their farm business data."

Several tools and guides will be available for technology providers to meet the standard set by the Farm Data Code, and the first of these will be a Data Sharing Agreement template developed with Food Agility CRC for technology providers to work with farmers around data sharing.

The project, Food Security Data Challenges: Data Sharing Initiatives, is supported by the Australian Data Research Common's Food Security Data Challenges program.

Organisations that handle farm business data on behalf of farmers are encouraged to be assessed and certified against the code. More information is available here.