The Year in Reverse: 2016
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Here's a look back at the five biggest ag law and technology stories from 2016.
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The Janzen Ag Tech Blog contains articles about the intersection of agriculture, technology, and law. All articles are original content, authored by attorney Todd Janzen. Subscribe by email at the bottom of this page to receive new posts after they are published.
John Deere's Electric Tractor Concept: A Bigger Idea than Just Another Tractor
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Earlier this year, I asked when is Tesla’s electricity going to come to farm? This week John Deere caught my attention this week when it announced an all-electric tractor concept in France. This post takes a closer look.
Read MoreReflections on Year One
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Janzen Ag Law is celebrating our first year. What better way to celebrate than a blog post on the highs and lows of what it means to start a business today.
Read MoreThoughts from the (Ag Data) Road
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The past two weeks I attended two very different ag data conferences. The first was the Big Data Dairy Management conference held by the American Dairy Science Association. The second was AgGateway's annual conference. The audiences were different, but many of the issues were the same. Here are few of my reflections.
Read MoreAggregated vs. Non-Aggregated Data. An Important Distinction.
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Farmer's should understand the difference between ag data platforms that aggregate data and those that don't.
Read MoreMaking a Federal Case Out of Ag Data
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A closer look at the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016.
Read MoreAn In Depth Look at the Federal Automated Vehicles Policy
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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has issued its Federal Automated Vehicles Policy. Although this policy applies solely to on-road vehicles, CNH’s recent introduction of a concept autonomous tractor suggests that NHTSA’s policy may have agricultural implications too. This post takes a deeper look at NHTSA’s Automated Vehicles Policy.
Read MoreSpeed Kings: DOJ Suit Puts the Brakes on High Speed Planting Merger
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The Department of Justice recently filed suit to prohibit John Deere's acquisition of high speed planting technology from Precision Planting. This article takes a closer look at the suit.
Read MoreCase IH Autonomous Tractor: What are the Legal Hurdles?
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Case IH unvieled its first autonomous tractor concept. What are the legal issues that will follow these driverless vehicles into the field?
Read MoreData Use Policies: Start by Defining Your Ag Data Guiding Principles
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Is your ag technology company struggling to define how it treats ag data? Define your guiding principles first.
Read MoreThe Internet of Farm Things (IoFT)
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When the Internet of Things arrives on the farm, the change will be remarkable. This post explores some issues that may arise with the coming wave of interconnected devices.
Read MoreFive Things Every Silicon Valley Ag Startup Should Know About Midwestern Farmers
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Farming is different than other industries. This post explains why.
Read MoreUpdated: Are We Ready for Autonomous Tractors?
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Although Google’s autonomous car appears to be getting most of the press, the auto-guidance system on tractors, combines, sprayers and other farm equipment has been around for years.
Read MoreWill “Big Data” Help the Small Farm, Large Farm, or Both?
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I have spoken at a number of events this past six months about the legal issues arising from the transfer of ag data from the farm into cloud-based platforms managed by ag technology providers (ATPs). Moving to the cloud is not for everyone, but what has surprised me is that the complaints I hear are from both “small” and “larger” farms. This post explores those complaints and asks, who is big data really for, the small farm or large farm?
Read MoreBig Data Considerations for Rural Property Professionals
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I recently contributed to an article about big data considerations for rural property appraisers and other professionals in Journal for the The American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers. Here is an excerpt and link to the full article.
Read MoreAg Data Survey: Providers Must Do More to Explain How Data is Used
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American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) conducted a survey of farmers to determine whether their attitudes about ag data had changed since the prior survey a couple years ago. The results were very interesting. Most farmers still do not have a solid understanding on what happens to their data when they move it from on-farm storage to cloud-based storage with an ag tech provider (ATP).
Read MoreAddressing Ag Data in Custom Farming Contracts
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As custom harvesters make their way across the United States and Canada this summer, I keep wondering what happens to all that yield data these machines are collecting. I am sure much of the data is forwarded to the landowners and farmers so that they can make decisions for next year. I hope so. But do custom harvesters address this in their agreements? Here are some suggestions for how they should.
Read MoreFrustrations with the Cloud
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Janzen Ag Law recently converted from Windows laptops to Apple MacBooks. I could write a book about the changes from Microsoft’s Windows to Apple’s OS, but one thing is the same—both Microsoft and Apple are now insistent on forcing users to use their cloud platforms. Windows embeds its cloud, “OneDrive” into everything. Apple’s mandatory sentencing to iCloud is not much better. Avoiding these cloud servers takes time and effort. As a result, I cannot tell you how many times I have saved a document into a cloud drive when that was not my intent.
Read MoreSearching for Ag Data's ROI
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Countless articles have been written about the potential value of ag data. But the immediate question for farmers trying to decide whether to invest in an ag data product is what is the return on investment (ROI) for this year? Listening to grower panels at precision ag events has convinced me that most farmers still don’t know what the ROI is for most ag data products on the market.
Read MoreDefining the Ag Data Pipelines
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There are many ways to describe the data that is streaming off the farm today. This post explores five currently accepted categories of ag data and how they are being used.
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All articles on the Janzen Ag Tech Blog are Copyrighted as of the date published by Janzen Agricultural Law LLC. Reprint only with permission.
Ten years ago the Ag Data Transparent project launched to help address farmers’ concerns with ag data platforms. Where do we stand today on these issues?