Farmers and their data: Evaluating the swiss conception of data sharing through the lens of digital farming
本文通过调查939名瑞士农民，分析了他们对农业数据共享的态度，发现隐私担忧是数字技术采用率低的关键原因，并建议改革数据保护法规以释放数字农业潜力。
Digitalisation has changed agricultural production and will continue to do so. Although digital technology promises to increase the efficiency, productivity and environmental friendliness of agriculture while improving the work-life balance of farmers, new digital farming technologies come with potential negatives, such as privacy and security concerns. In recognition of that fact data is a fundamental part of digital adoption in the agricultural sector , this article analyses Swiss farmers perceptions of data sharing. We apply the Responsible Research on Innovation (RRI) approach to anticipate and discuss farmers' legal and political perspectives on agricultural data and data sharing. These form the foundation of and thus the key to digitalisation in agriculture . Based on a review of the literature and two exploratory interviews on the broader regulatory context of data sharing, Swiss data regulation and management were included as background to this work. This paper, further explores in detail the relationship between farmers' attitudes towards data sharing and their relatively low adoption of digital technologies. Such an analysis is valuable as it provides us with the farmers' perspective on data use and regulations in Switzerland which, though not an EU country, has its own high data-protection standards. More specifically, we assessed Swiss farmers’ perceptions of agricultural data sharing with public and private entities and placed these perceptions within the broader Swiss framework for data regulation. This was accomplished by a survey of 939 randomly selected farmers in the German- and French-speaking parts of Switzerland. From the Swiss farming perspective, we discuss how innovation can respond to societal needs. We conclude that the concerns, risks and vulnerabilities that Swiss famers are currently experiencing with regard to their farm data need to be addressed through a broader regulatory reform of Swiss agricultural data protection if digital farming is to achieve its full potential in Switzerland.