[PakG1]

This is an excellent point. During university, I was part of a team that published a business case centred around the story of Vidalia Sweet Onions. This guy had developed a technology that took a sample of onions from a farmer's field, crushed the onions, and analyzed them for the characteristics that made for sweetness. The batches were tagged with grid numbers to enable farmers to confirm which plots of land had the type of soil necessary to make truly sweet onions. This then enabled the farmers to guarantee the sweetness level of various onions. The old guard was absolutely against it, as the collective of farmers that sold under the brand of Vidalia onions partly depended on the mysticism of not knowing which plots of land were able to generate sweet onions. Without this testing technology, the farmers were all on a level playing field, irregardless of their actual soil composition. The testing technology was able to clarify which emperors had no clothes. Whether a farmer can or should be able to own the data that is critical to his success is a question people never really had to consider before.

I liken it to mining. The companies who dig for various mineral deposits make significant investments into exploration of the ground. Their exploration generates a ton of data. They use that data to determine where to dig further and estimate the financial potential of the deposits. This then determines company stock values. It's ludicrous that such data may not be owned by the mining company that generated it (or acquired the rights for it). Obviously, what's happening with farms and FarmLogs is not a perfect analogy. But the parallels are interesting.