EIP-AGRI Workshop Data Sharing

The European Commission organised the EIP-AGRI workshop 'Data Sharing: ensuring a fair sharing of digitisation benefits in agriculture'. The event took place in Bratislava, Slovakia, on 4-5 April 2017. 

The final report of this Workshop has now been published. 

Data revolution in the agricultural sector

The digital revolution is now upon us. A number of digital technologies and trends with the potential of entirely transforming the way we work are now becoming available to the agricultural sector. These include big data, internet of things, robotics, etc. Applying these technologies to agriculture could provide solutions for many of the challenges the sector is facing.

However, in one way or another, these technologies all rely on data sharing among different actors within and outside of the sector (input providers, farmers, advisers, processors, marketers, public bodies, etc.). To generate value out of data, it often has to be aggregated, and data from different sources has to be combined. Data sharing is difficult to achieve and it needs to happen in an environment of trust.

Enabling the sharing of data

Several factors may affect the internal and external sharing of data in the agri-food sector. Data ownership and privacy, division of added-value coming from data, market power [re]distribution by data access and control, are some of these factors and they are key aspects to creating an environment of trust.  

The workshop will discuss the existing or potential arrangements, frameworks and pathways to enable effective, fair and valuable data sharing. Therefore, contributing to unlocking the potential the digital revolution holds for agriculture. 

This workshop will be part of the stakeholder dialogue following the recently published Communication on Building a European Data Economy. The latter elaborates on the potential framework conditions that would unleash Europe's data economy in a Digital Single Market, including the agriculture and its related sectors.

The concrete objectives of the workshop are:

• To explore existing and potential data governance models, to protect and satisfy the interests of the different parties involved, both within and outside
  agriculture.
• To evaluate the benefits for farmers of the most promising data governance models as well as to identify which constraints hamper their involvement in
  these models.
• To bring the relevant actors together to create the identified enabling environment(s) for data sharing and create new business/data sharing
  opportunities.
• Explore the potential of the principles and concepts described in the Communication on Building a European Data Economy.

Presentations (in order of the programme)

Day 1: Tuesday 4 April 2017

• Iman Boot (DG AGRI) - Why are we here?
• Stefano Bertolo (DG CONNECT) - EC Communication on Building a European Data Economy
• Nikos Manouselis (Agroknow) - Keynote presentation: What does effective data sharing mean?
• Sarah Watson - Introduction to breakout sessions & wrap up of Day 1

Day 2: Wednesday 5 April 2017

• Sarah Watson - Welcome to Day 2
• Iman Boot - Workshop wrap up

Workshop documents

• Draft programme
• Speaker CVs
• Participants list
• Final report

Background information:

• Final report EIP-AGRI Seminar on Data Revolution
• Communication on Building a European Data Economy

Related content:

• FAO brochure: National e-agriculture strategy (2017)