I am honored to testify before the U.S. House Committee on Agriculture, Subcommittee on General Farm Commodities and Risk Management, on July 13, 2017 at 10:00 a.m.. The Subcommittee is holding a hearing titled: The Future of Farming: Technological Innovations, Opportunities and Challenges. I am going to address the challenges facing farmers as their agricultural data is transferred, stored, and used by cloud-based provider platforms. Below is an excerpt from my testimony:

Good morning Chairman Crawford, Ranking Member Nolan, and members of Subcommittee. My name is Todd J. Janzen, I am the president and attorney with Janzen Agricultural Law, LLC, a law firm based in Indianapolis, Indiana that serves the needs of America’s farmers, ag technology providers, and agribusinesses.

One of the reasons we founded Janzen Ag Law in 2015 was that we wanted to be at the forefront of the changes that have been occurring on the farm for the past few years. Farms are becoming more digital every day, and together with that digitalization is a movement of agricultural data stored on computers in the farm office to cloud-based data storage devices. Agricultural data (ag data) can be many things, including yield data, soil data, planting information, weather data, financial data, etc. This marks the first time in history that the majority of the information that farmers generate and use on their farms has been moved into the hands of companies outside the farm.

As a result, we are seeing a digital land-rush occurring across the United States. The past few years have seen millions of dollars pour into ag data startups from Silicon Valley to Kansas City. Historic legacy agricultural companies, such as John Deere, are also at the forefront of this movement by expanding their product offerings to include cloud-based data storage platforms. All of these companies are scrambling to get the most acres of data into their platforms so that when consolidation of ag technology providers (ATPs) begins, they are in the strongest position.

In the race to the cloud, we must also be cautious so that the American farmer is not left behind. Today I will address the issues facing farmers as digitalization occurs and how the industry has begun to address these issues.

To continue and read my entire testimony, click here: Todd J. Janzen Written Testimony July 13, 2017

To watch the hearing live, visit the Committee on Agriculture webpage. The hearing begins at 10:00 a.m. EDT and continues until noon.