What does a successful data ecosystem look like?

The current environmental data landscape is incredibly complex. The agri-food supply chain needs a data ecosystem that connects the flow of environmental data.

The data eco-system should:

• Use existing data sets to pre-populate to reduce cost – collect once; use many times
• Have two-way exchange of data with carbon calculator providers to avoid duplication
• Provide farmers with a mechanism to control the flow of their data and capture its value
• Enable aggregation of data and feed it into government and supply-chain reporting mechanisms when farmer permission has been given

A successful environmental data ecosystem will:

• Be easy to use and trusted by farmers
• Have clear control of the use and privacy of data
• Allow farmers to capture value from it
• Be backed by farmers and growers, governments, the supply chain and retailers

To build such a system will require industry collaboration and government support.

As the farming unions and levy boards explore solutions, it is important to have a shared set of principles that will apply to any approach to management and collation of farm-level environmental data.

It is possible that some country-specific systems may be developed.

Where this happens, it is important that collaboration is facilitated through the individual systems sharing appropriate data where required.