Ethical Approach of Open Data benefiting small holder farmers
Creators: name: Zampati, Foteini
Publisher: name: F1000 Research Limited
Year: 2019

description: Currently, nearly 800 million people struggle with debilitating hunger and malnutrition and can be found in every corner of the globe. That's one in every nine people, with the majority being women and children. The solution to Zero Hunger lies within existing, but often unavailable, agriculture and nutrition data. Open Data offers a great potential for innovations from which the agricultural sector can benefit decisively due to a wide range of possibilities for further use. However, the use of open data is associated with some technical, ethical and legal challenges.   The technical challenges are associated with the need to create and develop new standards, platforms and infrastructures to allow access and better use of the data according to FAIR principles. In the last couple of years, the use of open data has raised also some ethical and legal issues as more and more stakeholders have entered into the agricultural sector developing new technologies that focus mainly on the collection, analysis and management of agricultural data. Ethics is about choices, and agricultural ethics is about choices for people engaged in agriculture, from farmers, industries, researchers, governments, policymakers, technology developers to consumers. There is no doubt that data driven agriculture has a lot of potential and benefits. Nevertheless farmers raise concerns about data ownership, intellectual property, privacy and security.  Mostly in developing countries smallholder farmers are not harnessing the power of data and many times must overcome challenges and risks to ensure that these investments benefit them.  The lack of awareness about farmers ́ rights on how the data is used, will likely lead to the unfair distribution of wealth in the agricultural sector which will increase due to Data-driven knowledge. Farmers need to feel and be engaged of their privacy and control, they seek trust and transparency in their interaction with providers and of course they would like to receive also benefits of their data, and to have access to all data. Although all of us make choices, few of us actively engage in an ethical analysis of our actions or can provide reasons for the choices we make. Our scope is to address some of these ethical issues and questions.<br><br>* What ethical principles need to be in place for the handling of data?  <br>* Who owns data and who has really control of the use of data?  <br>* What is responsible data? <br>* Are farmers reluctant to share their data? If so why?   <br>* How do we make information accessible to all actors involved in agriculture?  <br>* What about data protection? What do we mean by the farmers rights to data? -What is the state of recognition of these rights in national and international level ?  <br>* What ́s the role of GDPR or other legislation in the agricultural sector?<br>* How should these rights be implemented in local and international laws,  guidelines and policies and how can they be protected?<br>*  What should be done to include and give more voice to  farmers in the mechanisms of data? What role can governments play in this?<br>* How can we choose a path to a more equitable and innovative future for all?  <br><br>This topic is a good opportunity to start a conversation with different stakeholders about open data benefiting the smallholder farmers, acknowledging their importance in the data value chain.