A thought on farm size wrt big data

Precision agricultural technologies have historically been criticized for benefiting larger acreage farms more than small acreage farms. This is mainly the result of being able to spread the fixed costs of investment over more acres. Farm data has received similar criticisms. Some people state that large acreage farms benefit the most from farm data although opposing arguments can be made that small acreage farms benefit by ‘leveling the playing field’. Even small acreage farms may gain insights that were previously only available to the largest acreage farms when participating in a community.

In his recent blog post, Todd Janzen addresses farmers’ misconceptions and fears with respect to how farms benefit from sharing data. Farmers sometimes perceive that their particular farm size class isn’t likely to benefit from big data analytics. Todd sums up by describing how farmers fear that sharing their farm data resources reduces their competitive advantage.