Horizontal intervention, sectoral challenges: Evaluating the data act's impact on agricultural data access puzzle in the emerging digital agriculture sector

Abstract

The proposal of the Data Act containing ‘harmonised rules on fair access and use of data’ was released on 23 February 2022. It is a horizontal framework for data access to unlock competition and innovation. The emerging Digital Agriculture sector is one of the non-personal data-driven industries that can be affected by this legislative intervention. Therefore, it is highly relevant to investigate the possible implications of the horizontal Data Act proposal from the sectoral perspective. This paper aims to map the prominent data access problems in this emerging sector, explain the needed solutions for the sectoral challenges, demonstrate what the Data Act brings, and discuss to what extent this horizontal framework is helpful to overcome the sectoral problems connected to the ambiguities on agricultural data access. Thus, this piece also identifies the remaining issues that may need to be addressed by a possible follow-up sectoral regulation and competition law.