DOI 10.36253/978-88-5518-044-3.35
Sequence ID: 34
The knowledge of current constraints, information about how to navigate data bases and adaptation to new rules are presented in the current course. Precision agriculture constitutes a data-based management approach that depends on the collection and use
of field-specific data. The use of these data triggers the need for an assessment of the suitability of EU law to deal with the legal challenges. At present there is no EU legislation that specifically regulates the ownership of data. The usual practice
is data concerning particular farming techniques, as well as personally identifying information (financial data, staff data or other data derived from people's behavior, and sometimes environmental data) to be considered as personal and to be subject
to legal restrictions. On the other hand, agronomic data, meteorological data and compliance data are not regarded as personal. Personal farm details are subject to legislation for private life, guaranteed by the Council of Europe Convention on Human
Rights (Article 8) and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (Article 7). It becomes clear that, personal data are collected for a specific purpose and they are not allowed to be processed in a way that is not relevant with the initial
purpose.
The question arises about ownership of data. Farmers legally own the 'Primary data' generated on their farms. However, 'computed data' are considered as being owned by the one who did the computing. Moreover, when data are collected from different farmers,
it appears to become the property of the company that aggregates them. Although, there are gaps in the European law and the international standard for creating and sharing farm data, in any case the processing of precision agriculture data is required
to follow the new General Data Protection Regulation. That means that only the data for which farmers have given permission could be used and shared. So, they have the right to control the flow of their data to stakeholders. The above implies, also,
that only authorized persons should allow access to data and data should be used for as long as is necessary for the relevant analyses to be carried out. Recorded material should be protected during the processing period and automatic deleted after
that.
Concerning the use of technologies in precision agriculture of drones, robots and sensors, they collect data that are considered to be confidential farm-related data. Specifically, drones flying over other people's farms and homes can infringe privacy.
For this reason, a limited number of people should be allowed to view or access the recorded images or location collected by them. GIS data could provide, also,
information about individuals' actions, so care needed to ensure that rights are not violated.