The Data Lifecycle: How issues of ethics, governance and sovereignty impact the value of intelligent farming technologies

Digital agriculture is rooted in socio-cyber-physical relations. This raises issues, including data governance and ethics. In many cases we must also acknowledge data sovereignty and traditional land guardianship. Ideas of ‘citizenship’ rather than ‘end-users’ lead to appropriate co-design, cogovernance and co-innovation.  

We describe a conceptual Data Lifecycle tool that identifies interactions between the data citizens that are guardians of, and create, collect, store, process, interpret and use big, complex data. The tool acknowledges that data is power and empowers all citizens to help realise the benefits of Digitalisation and Big Data.  

We use the tool to describe a case study that explores the digitalisation of a New Zealand grassland beef cattle farm, integrating data from virtual fencing with an array of other inputs.  

NZBIDA