Who Owns Your Farm Data: Apps, Contracts and Control

December is when the farm office catches up with the farm. The last loads are sold, the receipts come out of the truck console, and someone sits down to make the year add up before the tax preparer asks for it. More of that record now lives in apps: the guidance system in the tractor, the herd app on a phone, the online store, the bookkeeping software, the yield monitor's cloud account. Which raises a question most of us have clicked past a hundred times on an "I agree" screen: who actually owns all of that?

The short answer is that the law mostly does not say, the contract does, and the only records you truly control are the ones you can export and keep yourself. Here is what farm apps collect, what the voluntary rules in this industry promise, how to read a data policy in ten minutes, and how to keep a simple system that still works if a vendor is sold, changes its terms or shuts down.

What a farm app actually collects

Ag Data Transparent, the nonprofit that certifies data contracts in this industry, sorts farm data into six categories: land data (soil tests, field boundaries, drainage, drone imagery), agronomic data (seed, planting records, application rates, yields), machine data (fuel use, machine health, machine load), farm financial and management data (tax records, loans, labor, customer and supplier records), climate and weather data from on-farm sensors, and livestock data (identification, health events, production, genetics) (Ag Data Transparent, Ag Data Categories). Read that list with your own phone in mind. A single small farm can easily have six companies holding pieces of it.

The farm office has moved online faster than most people realize. USDA's August 2025 technology survey found 85 percent of US farms with internet access, 82 percent using a smartphone, half buying inputs online (up from 32 percent in 2023) and 22 percent using precision agriculture practices (USDA NASS, Farm Computer Usage and Ownership, August 2025). On the machine side, USDA's Economic Research Service traced auto-steer guidance from 5.3 percent of planted corn acres in 2001 to 58 percent in 2016 (USDA ERS, EIB-248, full report), and reports guidance on well over half of the acreage planted to corn, soybeans, winter wheat, cotton, rice and sorghum (USDA ERS, Precision Agriculture in the Digital Era, February 2023). Every one of those systems logs where the machine went, what it applied and what came off the field; we covered the basics in What Is Precision Agriculture? A small diversified farm holds less machine data, but its customer, sales and herd records often sit in a single app, which makes the question of who controls that app more pressing, not less.

Who owns it: what the law says and does not

There is no federal law that says who owns the data a farm generates. A 2017 University of Maryland Extension fact sheet written with Kansas State put it plainly: no specific laws or legal precedent exist, and the closest fit is trade secret protection, which only helps a farmer who can show the data had value and was kept secret (Ellixson and Griffin, Farm Data: Ownership and Protections). The authors expected case law or legislation to settle the question eventually, noted that state legislatures could help by writing clear rules, and recorded that as of 2016 no existing law covered farm data ownership at all. What governs, then, is the agreement you accept when you sign up.

Terry Griffin, the Kansas State economist who co-wrote that fact sheet, adds a point that is easy to miss. Digital data can be copied at almost no cost, and a copy is indistinguishable from the original, so the practical question is not who owns it but whether you can keep others from accessing data that only you control. His answer: yes, but only until the data is shared with a third party or pooled into a larger dataset (Griffin, Who Can Own Farm Data?). Once a copy is on a vendor's server, your leverage is the contract and nothing else.

Machine data has one extra layer. The memorandum of understanding John Deere signed with the American Farm Bureau Federation in January 2023, covered in our article on the right to repair, commits the manufacturer to make the codes and real-time data from a farmer's equipment available to that farmer and, with the farmer's authorization, to the independent shop the farmer picks (AFBF and John Deere MOU, Section II). That is access, not ownership, and a voluntary agreement rather than a law. It still means you can ask for the data your own tractor generated and expect to get it.

The Farm Bureau principles and the Ag Data Transparent seal

In 2014 the American Farm Bureau Federation noticed that many of its farmer members were uneasy about the new data products being offered to them, hosted a series of round tables with other farm groups and the technology providers, and out of those came the Privacy and Security Principles for Farm Data. The organizations involved then formed a nonprofit, Ag Data Transparent or ADT, with attorney Todd Janzen as administrator (Ag Data Transparent, About). ADT's members updated the principles in 2024. The ones that matter most to a farmer: farmers should own information originating from their operations, collection should happen only with explicit consent, farmers should be able to retrieve their data for use on other platforms, providers should notify farmers when agreements change and summarize the changes, and farmers should be able to terminate a service or halt collection at any time (Ag Data Transparent, Core Principles).

The seal works like this. A company submits the contracts it asks farmers to sign and answers eleven questions about them: what data it collects, whether its agreements address ownership, whether a user can opt out of aggregated datasets, whether it obtains consent before sharing with third parties, whether signing up lets it sell aggregated data, whether a user can retrieve or delete an original copy, whether it notifies users of a breach or of changed terms, and what happens to the data if the company is sold (Ag Data Transparent, 11 Questions). A third-party legal administrator checks the answers against the contracts, the answers are published on ADT's site beside links to the contracts, and the seal is renewed every year (ADT, Step 3 in ADT Certification, August 2025). More than 50 companies have earned it since 2014 (ADT, Final Step in the Certification Pipeline, August 2025), including names most farmers recognize, such as John Deere's Operations Center and Climate FieldView (ADT Certified Companies).

Two cautions. The seal says a company's answers match its contract; it does not say the contract is generous. Climate LLC's entry, for instance, says FieldView users own the farm data they provide and can request a copy or full deletion, but also that uploaded data may be used in aggregated and anonymized datasets, and the only ways to stay out are to keep data local and never upload it, or to close the account and have it deleted (ADT, Climate LLC certification, July 2025). That is a clear answer, which is what the seal is for. The second caution is that many good apps, especially the small ones built for direct-market farms, have never applied. ADT publishes a model data use agreement, last updated on November 1, 2025, that any company can adopt, so a small vendor has no excuse for a vague policy (ADT Model Ag Data Use Agreement).

How to read a data policy in ten minutes

You do not need to read the whole thing. Open the terms of service and the privacy policy, search for these words, and write down what you find:

• "own" or "ownership": do you own your data, or do you only hold a license to use the service?
• "aggregate" or "anonymized": can your data be pooled and sold, and can you opt out?
• "third party" and "share": is consent required before sharing, or is sharing the default?
• "export", "download" or "retrieve": can you get a complete copy in a usable format, and does that right survive cancellation?
• "delete" and "retention": what happens to your data when you leave, and how long do they keep it?
• "modify" or "change": will they notify you when the terms change, or does continued use count as agreement?
• "merger", "acquisition" or "sale": what happens if the company is sold or goes out of business?

If a policy does not answer a question, assume the answer is the one you would not like, and ask the vendor in writing. Most farmers never do. ERS found that the share of national acreage whose operators had opted out of letting their technology provider share field data with third parties was 5.1 percent for corn in 2016, 3.4 percent for winter wheat in 2017, 7.1 percent for soybeans in 2018 and 9.6 percent for cotton in 2019 (USDA ERS, EIB-248, full report). The opt-out existed; almost nobody used it. A vendor's defaults are never set in your favor, and this is one of the few places where the box you tick changes the outcome. If you rent ground, add the landowner to the list: decide in advance what yield data you will share and put it in the lease.

Get your records out, every year

Here is where the December timing earns its keep. The IRS does not care what software you use. The Farmer's Tax Guide says that, except in a few cases, the law does not require any specific kind of records, and you can choose any system that clearly shows your income and expenses. But it adds a condition every app user should read twice: an electronic storage system must index, store, preserve, retrieve and reproduce your books and records in legible format, and it is subject to the same retention rules as paper (IRS Publication 225, Farmer's Tax Guide). An app you can no longer log into does not meet that test.

How long is long enough? The general rule is three years from the date you filed, six years if you left out income amounting to more than 25 percent of the gross income on the return, at least four years for employment tax records, and for property until the limitations period runs out for the year you dispose of it (IRS, How long should I keep records?). A tractor bought in 2025 and sold in 2035 means a purchase record kept until the end of the 2030s. No app subscription will still be running then on the same terms.

So make the export an annual job, done in December before the year's figures are final. From each app, download the full dataset in an open format: CSV or spreadsheet for financial and sales records, PDF for invoices and statements, shapefile or GeoJSON for field boundaries and yield maps, plain CSV for herd and flock records. Name the files by year and source, put them in one folder on a drive you own, and copy that folder to a second place that is not tied to any of the apps. The tax calendar gives this a rhythm: farmers who earn at least two-thirds of their gross income from farming can skip quarterly estimates if they file and pay by March 1, or make a single estimated payment by January 15 (IRS Topic 416, Farming and Fishing Income). If the exports are done in December, the return is a matter of handing over a folder. We covered the forms in our plain-language guide to Schedule F. The wider December routine is in Winter Planning for a Small Farm.

A system that survives a vendor

We write often about simplicity. We also write about thinking in decades rather than seasons, and farm data is where the two meet. The app is a tool for this year. The record is the asset, and it has to outlive the tool.

• No app without an export. If a product cannot give your data back in a format another program can open, it is not a record system, it is a rental.
• Keep the master copy in the plainest format that works. A spreadsheet of sales by customer and date will open in 2045. A proprietary database from a company acquired in 2030 may not.
• Keep the few documents that matter on paper too: the deed or lease, loan agreements, inspection records, the organic or GAP certificate, the depreciation schedule. Paper is a poor database and an excellent backup.
• Write down the logins and the export steps where the next person can find them. Succession planning fails on small things, and "nobody knows the password to the herd app" is a small thing with a large cost.
• Test it once a year. Open last year's export on a different computer. If it does not open, fix it now, not when the vendor's server is gone.

None of this argues against the tools. The soil moisture sensors, the free satellite imagery, the online store: these are good at their jobs. We said as much when we wrote about choosing farm management software. The argument is for owning the result, the same case we made for decentralization in the supply chain. A farm that can hand its full history to a new agronomist, a lender, a buyer or the next generation, in files it controls, is in a stronger position than one that has to ask a vendor nicely.

The practical close

Before the year ends, do five things:

1. List every app and account that holds farm records, with the login and who holds it.
2. For each one, answer the seven questions above. If the vendor is on the Ag Data Transparent certified list, read its published answers.
3. Export everything in open formats, file it by year and source, and copy the folder to a second place you control.
4. Turn off any third-party sharing you did not knowingly agree to, and ask the vendor in writing if the setting is not there.
5. Put the export on the calendar for next December, beside the three tax dates: December 31, January 15, March 1.

The service providers and manufacturers in our resources section lean toward vendors who make this easy to check. The organizations directory lists the farm groups behind the principles. Your data is worth more to you than to anyone else. Keep a copy.