You’re probably reading about a new application of artificial intelligence (AI) nearly every time you check your AI-driven news feed. Previously underutilized mountains of data can fuel AI algorithms.
Our agriculture and natural resources leaders are excited about the potential benefits UF/IFAS can deliver using AI to turn data into decisions. But they recently asked some important questions: How is farm and ranch data collected? Stored? Shared? Protected?
We didn’t have solid answers for them. So we got to work.
Historically, we’ve been able to do a lot with all our agriculture and natural resource stakeholders based on a handshake. Our handshake is still good, but for data protection we need strong policies, too.
Not using artificial intelligence and not using data are not options. Getting data use right is about keeping our handshake trustworthy for the decades to come.
A summit with friends
Our effort started with a two-day UF/IFAS Agricultural Data Use & Privacy Summit in December, kicked off by Florida Farm Bureau Federation President Jeb Smith and Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association President Mike Joyner.
We brought together the best minds we could find on the subject. We learned about BMPs for data use, industry data security standards, and resources on data governance that we already have at UF beyond IFAS. We invited experts from industry and government from across the nation.
These experts told us other states already have laws to protect farm data.
I visited Commissioner of Agriculture Wilton Simpson earlier this year in Tallahassee and we discussed this. He offered his support for a Florida law.
The summit set us on a course to fast-track the development of protocols and tools to protect farm and natural resource data privacy.
A new panel to help us stay vigilant
We’ve just stood up a task force created as a result of the summit, the UF/IFAS Strategic Working Group on Data Use & Privacy.
Michael Dukes, associate Extension dean and director of the UF/IFAS Center for Land Use Efficiency, and former UF Water Institute director and National Science Foundation division director Wendy Graham are its co-chairs, and I serve on the working group.
We can’t afford to let global competitors know Florida’s secrets. The release of data without context can be devastating to a producer if someone else makes up a story with that data.
We’re going to get this right because we have the most essential tool of all—trust. Our stakeholders trust us to listen and then to act on what we hear.
Jae Ahn, UF/IFAS assistant professor in AI Extension, has just launched a survey of producers to help us listen. He’ll analyze responses and develop training on data protection for Extension agents and for producers.
The relevancy of our research is rooted in validation from on-farm trials that require data collection. This is more important than ever, because better data means better AI and better decision support tools.
Trust, too, is as important as ever. That’s why, with this work, we declare that data stewardship and privacy are a foundational principle for our partnerships.
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