Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 24 March 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Joint Meeting with Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action
Exploring Technologies and Opportunities to Reduce Emissions in the Agriculture Sector: Discussion

Mr. Desmond Savage:

It is a good question. We provide a data set associated with individual animals. First you have data; when people start to look at them, those data become information; when you start to combine information, you develop knowledge and then wisdom. That is the progression. In accordance with our terms and conditions and the general data protection regulation, GDPR, all the data collected at farm level are owned by the farmer. I suspect in time farmers will look at this data as an asset and might be able to develop some revenue off the back of them. As you combine data sets, you can expedite the information and knowledge available. Right now, we are honouring our terms and conditions and farmers' data remain the property of farmers but in the future there may be an opportunity to farm the data and move from farming animals to farming data. When we start doing that and applying technology such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and the myriad of technologies out there, there are significant improvements to be made in the future. I see it going that way but we need to be careful to follow GDPR and ensure farmers' data are respected. I do not know if that answers the question. We have to honour GDPR before moving to the next stage. I suspect with the likes of research institutes, this is something we will do in the near future.