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Digital data sharing in agricualture

Data is growing in importance across all sectors, including agriculture. With the advent of new digital technologies and innovative business models, the amount of data available and potential use cases are increasing. FinTech and AgTech innovators have started to recognize this trend and are utilizing data in new ways. Many are exploring data partnerships, combining the power of multiple datasets to create greater impact for smallholder farmers. Underpinning many of these engagements are complex negotiations about how data sharing can unlock service delivery and enable different social and commercial outcomes for different players. AgriFin has been deeply
involved in organically helping to structure many of these agreements that govern the use of data. Within each of these types service provision arrangements there are different actors with a variety of interests and incentives to share data.
Drawing on AgriFin’s years of experience, this research undertook a stock-take of what has been learned about data sharing to enhance service delivery to smallholder farmers. These insights draw from 33 of AgriFin’s data sharing engagements and distilled the lessons to make them broadly applicable, as well as built frameworks and tools to fill identified gaps. This Digital Data Sharing in Agriculture learning brief is expected to be used broadly by the agriculture community.