excellent summary of the opportunity. USAID's Cooperative Development Project should be able to help with governance and the cooperative operating environment. Please feel free to reach out at chammerdorfer@ncba.coop.
You raise important issues. It has been clear to me for a long time that agriculture has an acute governance problem both in the public and in the private (cooperatives and other intermediaries) sectors. We can't pursue a digital agriculture agenda whilst avoiding the governance question; the latter of course is not palatable for the AgTech sector. That said, I strongly believe that trust remains a high value currency in agriculture at the local level and I also believe there continues to exist a real digital divide.
Therefore creating a new form of cooperative (a data cooperative) with a vocabulary and outlook that is most certainly 'alien' to many may not present as valuable a proposition for a farmer as a legacy cooperative with data cooperative capabilities. The incentives for many farmers, who don't see how their data could possibly be monetized, would be easier to craft through the traditional cooperative engagements with data ecosystem actors and collaboration with other agriculture sector ecosystem actors. They already do this to get better prices on inputs, better off take terms, affordable support services and lobbying of public sector institutions such as parliaments. A purpose-built cooperative should be a last resort in specific cases within geographies or value chains but the default should be legacy ones with data co-op superpowers.
These are good questions when it comes to the viability of data cooperatives and farmer-centric data governance. My suggestion, to better answer these questions (for example question 1 on value chains), ask additional ones and provide truly relevant responses, is to narrow the geographical scope of the concern and refer for example to the national or sub-regional level. Indeed, in my view it is difficult to have relevant responses and solutions for the entire Global South which is so diverse (compare the situation of digital agriculture or agricultural organisations in India and Benin for example).
From the point of view of Benin or West-Africa or Africa even for example, an immediate issue maybe the existence, prior to the governance, of these data cooperatives. I am not aware that we have real data cooperatives in these above-mentioned geographies. Therefore, some questions from that perspective could be: What are the actual interests, what would be the motives of farmers to contribute to these frameworks and how to ensure these interests can be fulfilled by the ecosystem ? (this will ensure we build solutions for actual problems). What are the conditions for effective creation of data cooperatives, including in terms of data middleware infrastructure, ecosystem trust building, capacity building and resource needs (notably concerning agricultural organisations and cooperatives many of which don't have digitalised data, including for data system managers) ? How to improve the performance of legacy farmer organisations, from local/national organisations (many of which have weak, fragmented governance and sustainability), to the likes of ROPPA, EAFF, etc.) so that they effectively contribute to these schemes? What are data ethics considerations in these perspectives, etc.
excellent summary of the opportunity. USAID's Cooperative Development Project should be able to help with governance and the cooperative operating environment. Please feel free to reach out at chammerdorfer@ncba.coop.
You raise important issues. It has been clear to me for a long time that agriculture has an acute governance problem both in the public and in the private (cooperatives and other intermediaries) sectors. We can't pursue a digital agriculture agenda whilst avoiding the governance question; the latter of course is not palatable for the AgTech sector. That said, I strongly believe that trust remains a high value currency in agriculture at the local level and I also believe there continues to exist a real digital divide.
Therefore creating a new form of cooperative (a data cooperative) with a vocabulary and outlook that is most certainly 'alien' to many may not present as valuable a proposition for a farmer as a legacy cooperative with data cooperative capabilities. The incentives for many farmers, who don't see how their data could possibly be monetized, would be easier to craft through the traditional cooperative engagements with data ecosystem actors and collaboration with other agriculture sector ecosystem actors. They already do this to get better prices on inputs, better off take terms, affordable support services and lobbying of public sector institutions such as parliaments. A purpose-built cooperative should be a last resort in specific cases within geographies or value chains but the default should be legacy ones with data co-op superpowers.
Thanks for these great insights, John
These are good questions when it comes to the viability of data cooperatives and farmer-centric data governance. My suggestion, to better answer these questions (for example question 1 on value chains), ask additional ones and provide truly relevant responses, is to narrow the geographical scope of the concern and refer for example to the national or sub-regional level. Indeed, in my view it is difficult to have relevant responses and solutions for the entire Global South which is so diverse (compare the situation of digital agriculture or agricultural organisations in India and Benin for example).
From the point of view of Benin or West-Africa or Africa even for example, an immediate issue maybe the existence, prior to the governance, of these data cooperatives. I am not aware that we have real data cooperatives in these above-mentioned geographies. Therefore, some questions from that perspective could be: What are the actual interests, what would be the motives of farmers to contribute to these frameworks and how to ensure these interests can be fulfilled by the ecosystem ? (this will ensure we build solutions for actual problems). What are the conditions for effective creation of data cooperatives, including in terms of data middleware infrastructure, ecosystem trust building, capacity building and resource needs (notably concerning agricultural organisations and cooperatives many of which don't have digitalised data, including for data system managers) ? How to improve the performance of legacy farmer organisations, from local/national organisations (many of which have weak, fragmented governance and sustainability), to the likes of ROPPA, EAFF, etc.) so that they effectively contribute to these schemes? What are data ethics considerations in these perspectives, etc.