Your Digital Fingerprint: Is It Yours or a Spectator’s?

Back in the mid-1980s, I wrote about how GPS would revolutionize our lives. One of my books published back then was called Advances in Agriculture, in which I highlighted how GPS would transform agriculture in the 1990s and beyond.

Those predictions came true thanks to smart tractors from John Deere. Farmers can collect data via GPS to determine exactly where in the field they’re getting the best and worst yields, foot by foot, as they harvest, allowing them to plug that data into their planters and know exactly where to plant more seeds and maximize their yields.

And because the data comes from the farmers’ equipment and is downloaded onto a memory stick that stays with the farmers, it becomes the farmers’ intellectual property; it’s their data.

Prying Eyes on Farmer’s Agriculture Data

However, as you may remember, Monsanto, one of the biggest companies in agriculture providing seeds for genetically modified crops, approached the farmers and made an interesting offer. It wanted all the farmers’ data to go directly from harvesters and planters to the Monsanto cloud, permitting them to the specifics of what grows well and where. In return, Monsanto provided farmers with information on the best ways to work their fields as well as the best tools for…