Regulating Big Data in Agriculture Reporté

Le Projet sur l’IA pour des humains et environnements sains du Forum Alex-Trebek pour le dialogue à l’Initiative IA + Société présente, en collaboration avec le Centre de recherche en droit, technologie et société, l'Institut de recherche sur la science, la société et la politique publique et le Centre en droit, éthique et politique de la santé :

Data governance and regulation has become a growing concern in both public debates and among scholars coming from various disciplinary fields. Discussions have primarily been centered around data collected by platforms and corporations, and the need to regulate these data-mining processes and the uses – and misuses – of personal information. Meanwhile, other domains, such as agriculture, have been less a of focus of these regulatory conversations, presumably due to the different legal status of environmental data, and agriculture’s distance to urban centers where policies are primarily made and debated. Yet, the growing datafication of agriculture makes evident the need to raise attention around data regulatory issues in this domain.

The panel will discuss the state of data regulation in agriculture. What makes agriculture a potentially distinct site for digital data collection – i.e., environmental law, unpredictable (weather) conditions, costs, corporate players? How is it similar to other domains where discussions have been more extensive, such as social media and health data use? Is the much-heralded call for “open data” or “public data” the solution for confronted powerful data corporations, and does it equate to equate to full information access and social justice more broadly?

This event is presented as part of the Alex Trebek Forum for Dialogue’s Project on AI for Healthy Humans and Environments, hosted by the AI + Society Initiative. You can learn more about our research program on AI and Environment here.

À propos des panélistes (en anglais seulement)

Dr. Kelly Bronson is the Canada Research Chair in Science and Society, a Faculty member at the Centre for Law, Technology, and Society, and an Associate Professor within the School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Ottawa. She is a social scientist studying the social and environmental justice issues surrounding controversial technologies (GMOs, fracking, big data & AI) and their governance. Her research aims to bring community values into conversation with technical knowledge in the production of evidence-informed decision-making. She leads several grant-funded projects looking at emergent technologies used in agriculture and in environmental impact assessment and has just published a new book called The Immaculate Conception of Data: agribusiness, activists and their shared politics of the future (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022).

Jonathan W. Y. Gray is Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Critical Infrastructure Studies at the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London, where he is currently writing a book on data worlds. He is also Cofounder of the Public Data Lab and Research Associate at the Digital Methods Initiative (University of Amsterdam) and the médialab (Sciences Po, Paris).

Sarah-Louise Ruder is a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia’s Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability, a UBC Public Scholar, and a Researcher at the University of the Fraser Valley's Food and Agriculture Institute. Interdisciplinary by training, Sarah-Louise is an environmental social scientist studying food and agriculture in Canada. Her research explores transitions to more sustainable, food sovereign, and just food systems and the politics of novel agri-food technologies. As part of her PhD work and public scholarship, she is investigating challenges and opportunities for data governance and data justice with the increasing digitalization of the food system, working alongside LiteFarm, OpenTEAM, and the FAO’s Improving Global Agriculture Data community of practice.

Rian Wanstreet is a PhD Candidate at the University of Washington in Communication/Science, Technology, & Society. Her work sits at the intersection of adoption, media, security infrastructure, and algorithmic mediation. She is an affiliate at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society and a non-residential Fellow at the Center for Media and Data Studies at Central European University. She currently works for OpenTEAM, a collaborative, community-driven initiative focused on improving soil health and advancing agriculture's ability to become a solution to climate change through the development of an interoperable suite of open-source tools.

Jonathan Van Geuns is both a researcher and practitioner; he has gained expertise on all subjects related to innovation and data governance. Recently he has worked on seminal research and the design of data governance frameworks for UNICEF, the United States Agency for International Development, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Mozilla Foundation, and the City of Montreal, where he currently resides. He is trained in public international law, and has over a decade of experience working across sectors of development aid, access to data and information, participatory design, and innovation management, among others.