The EU Code of Conduct on Agricultural Data Sharing underlines the importance of setting transparent principles and guidelines to support the development of digital farming, which demonstrates the need for increased data sharing in agriculture. . 

To fully benefit from digital farming, data must be shared between all partners in the agri-food chain in a fair and transparent way. This Code of Conduct, accepted and signed by over ten key European agricultural sector organisations, aims to promote the benefits of sharing data and enabling agri-business models, including agri-cooperatives and other agri-businesses, to swiftly move into an era of digitally enhanced farming. The Code of Conduct explains contractual relations and provides guidance on the use of agricultural data, particularly on the rights of access and use of the data.

All signatories of the Code of Conduct recognise the need to grant the data originator a leading role in controlling access to and the use of data. The guidelines also underline that the right to determine who can access and use the data should be granted to the data originator. In practice this means that the rights to data collected on the farm or during farming operations are granted to the farmer and may be used as he or she sees fit. 

Signatories:

• AnimalhealthEurope
• Fertilizers Europe
• CEETTAR
• CEJA
• CEMA
• CLIMMAR
• Copa and Cogeca
• ECPA
• EFFAB
• ESA
• FEFAC  

EU Code of conduct on agricultural data sharing by contractual agreement