Farm Data for Carbon Programs
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
It seems like every major agribusiness is coming out with a carbon program. But what should you consider before signing up to receive some of these payments for practices that sequester carbon? AGI Digital’s Jason Tatge has seen a lot in his 20+ years in agtech. His advice is to be very diligent in collecting the relevant data, but be careful not to give up too much control of what can be done with your data in the future.
Tatge… “Collect your data first, make sure you have good quality data. And then think of it as an appreciating asset. You might not use it for two or three years, but having the historical collection of that data, many of these programs require at least three years of history before you can really take advantage of them. And so I would say, make sure that you have some flexibility here on where to go with it. Most technology companies in agriculture today are not built to get data out of their systems. They're built to suck data into their systems. Okay. And so that's a really, really important piece. And the data that oftentimes come out through APIs is not the same data that you could collect on a thumb drive. So we have to be cognizant of having a high quality data set, collecting it and making it as complete as we can. Over time, you're gonna be able to participate in whatever program you want.”
Make sure you do your due diligence on any carbon program before signing up.