Following a vote last week in the European Parliament’s Committee on Agriculture in relation to farm data, the umbrella group for EU farm organisations is calling for proper regulation of how that data is used.
The committee voted on a report into the proposal to convert the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) into the new Farm Sustainability Data Network (FSDN).
EU farm organisation Copa Cogeca welcomed the work from the committee, which it said responded to many of the uncertainties expressed by the farming community.
Copa said: “Given the continuous changes in the EU legislative framework, farmers need solid assessments of the impact EU policies will have on their activity and on their sustainability.”
The organisation said it welcomed the fact that the report “focussed on evidence-based policies and lists the evaluation of the impact of future policies on the agricultural sector as one of the objectives of this data network”.
According to Copa, regulating how data is used “is paramount”.
“It is highly important that when collecting data with the help of farmers, data is used for the benefit of farmers and not against them,” the organisation said in a statement.
The committee’s report outlines guarantees in relation to data protection, it said.
Copa also welcomed the voluntary approach to data collection outlined in the committee’s report.
“Member states should focus more on methods and incentives, including financial ones, to encourage farmers to take part in the FSDN. [We] would thus oppose a mandatory approach which could even lead to penalties,” the group said.
It also said: “There is a need to provide clarity on what data is necessary to be collected, avoid duplications with other data collection exercises, and reduce the administrative burden on farmers.
“To make an impact, comparable, timely, and reliable, data is key.
“As data users, farmers can benefit from the support of advisory services, including from their agriculture co-operatives, to get the best value-added from available data. Thus [we] welcome that the report follows the principle of ‘collect once, use multiple times’ while making sure that data protection is safeguarded,” the Copa statement added.