The nine principles to help build a data ecosystem

The nine principles outlined below will underpin further discussions on the development of a data ecosystem. Regardless of the outcome, these principles will help ensure that any future environmental data system is easy to use and trusted by farmers, with clear data ownership and value captured and shared fairly in the supply chain.

1. Farmers own/control their data, including carbon footprint (raw and derived by calculation), and can permit or restrict its onward use.
2. Individual data will not be passed to any other party without farmer agreement, including commercial entities (processors, retailers, etc.), governments and agencies.
3. The data system should support the ability of farmers to capture value from their data from current and future arrangements, including:
   • Natural capital markets
   • Commercial arrangements within the supply chain
   • Government support arrangements
4. Farmer representatives must be integral to the governance and control of the system to stimulate trust.
5. Where possible, data must be based on individual farm data (not inappropriate averages) to incentivise and reward improved performance on farm. In accordance with Principle 1 this requires agreement of the data owner.
6. Farmers should be able to access and share with the environmental data system any existing government and industry data about their farm to avoid duplication and ensure there is one version of the truth with the highest-quality data.
7. Data collection and reporting must be as consistent as possible across the different devolved governments to allow UK/GB-level reporting.
8. If different systems are used by devolved nations, then, where appropriate, they must be able to share consistent data with those to whom farmers wish to supply the data.
9. Aggregated (anonymised) national data of sufficient sample size will be available for use to inform government, support the reputation of our industry and market our products domestically and overseas.