One of the ways that artificial intelligence (AI) has been marketed to agricultural business owners is as a tool to improve market competitiveness. AI platforms promise to deliver real time market insights in a way that humans never could, since AI has the ability to analyze much larger datasets than any single person. This post
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45Z Brings Ag Data Questions
The Inflation Reduction Act (“IRA”) created many market incentives to combat climate change. One of these incentives is the issuance of tax credits to renewable fuel producers, called “45Z credits” due to their location in Section 45 of the Internal Revenue Code. In theory, these 45Z credits should increase the price paid to farmers who…
Using Agricultural Data to Address Sustainability Challenges

The following article is a summary of my presentation to the 32nd Annual No-Till Conference written by Landon Swan, No-Till Farmer Magazine, regarding the ag data issues arising from the USDA’s Partnership for Climate Smart Commodities.
Ag data has become increasingly important to not only farmers, but corporate companies like McDonalds and PepsiCo as well.…
In a Digital World, Don't Lose Sight of Contract Basics
Playing basketball in my younger days, I remember one thing would happen in practice after any loss—the coach would make you go back to practice basic fundamentals. Dribble. Pass. Shoot. It was a good life lesson. Any time you find yourself facing an overwhelming problem, break the problem down into the basics. With the rise…
New Concepts in the Updated Core Principles for Ag Data
Ten years after American Farm Bureau Federation first publicized the Ag Data Core Principles, the Ag Data Transparent organization undertook the effort to update the principles to reflect changes in the ag data market. This post explores some of the significant changes to the updated Core Principles.New Simple Contracts Principle. The original principles were…
Updated Core Principles for Ag Data (2024)
In 2014, American Farm Bureau Federation led industry roundtable discussions about collection, use, and sharing of agricultural data from farmers. The result of those discussions was the creation of a document called the Privacy and Security Principles for Farm Data, what later became knowns as the “Core Principles” for ag data. Over 37 companies quickly…
Insets vs. Offsets on the Farm
Climate change has brought new words into our vocabularies that barely existed a decade ago. Two words frequently used when discussing reduction of the carbon footprint for agriculture are “insets” and “offsets.” This post explores these terms as they pertain specifically to agriculture. As a threshold matter, these are not legal terms and are thus…
Who is a "Foreign Person" in the Eyes of USDA?
Midwestern politicians are drumming up support for increased oversight of foreign ownership of US agricultural farmland. At the state and federal level, there are bills seeking to reduce or increase reporting obligations for foreign ownership of farmland. Arkansas even went so far as to order Syngenta (whose parent company is Chinese) to divest 160 acres…
Using Ag Data to Win Your Case

Farm Journal’s recent article featured one of our long-fought cases against the Indiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR) for crop damage (Damned by Data: State Destroys Farmer’s Yield, Pays $810,000 in Damages). As explained in the article, our case depended on explaining periodic and partial flooding of farm fields over a course of…
AI, the Black Box, and Transparency
Artificial intelligence (AI) use is on the rise in agriculture and elsewhere, thanks to generative AI platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. AI is often described as a Black Box, where data is fed into the box and decisions are made, without anyone knowing exactly how the Black Box arrived at the result. Considering that the AI…