From connectivity gaps to data ownership: precision agriculture in Ontario, Canada

Abstract

Adoption of Precision Agriculture (PA) technologies by farmers in Canada grew rapidly in recent years. There is an expectation that the Internet of Things (IoT) in food and agricultural systems is tremendously important, with substantial benefits for the economy, society, and specifically, for rural communities, agri-businesses and family farms. Nevertheless, generally low internet access within rural areas negatively affects the uptake and expansion of PA technologies. As this paper will explain, the use of wireless-enabled data transfer from PA applications is currently low due to two main factors: a) bandwidth and b) data security. Our 2016 study found that crop farmers in Southwestern Ontario are willing to adopt PA but adoption is negatively affected by low broadband internet access. Other relevant influences on PA adoption were farmer age and farm size. Proprietary rights to their own data and trust relations that implicate data sharing were questions included in the study based on previous studies that point to farmers' concerns about big data access. The paper concludes with a look at the plans for the expansion of rural broadband, announced in late 2016 by the Government of Canada and the relevance of connectivity to future PA adoption and big data in agriculture and agri-food systems. Without integrated policy approaches to broadband internet connectivity in the rural and agricultural sectors, PA functionality is essentially turned-off, which potentially reduces return-on-investment. A list of key social science research questions on big data, PA and broadband use by Canadian farmers is presented with the final conclusions.