Creación de un nuevo bien común para las cooperativas agrícolas: Big data, TIC e intercambio de datos

Creating a new commons for agricultural cooperatives: Big data, ICT and data sharing. The utilisation of Big Data and ICT technologies on a large scale in agriculture is seen to be a solution for dealing with climate change, environmental degradation, land and water constraints, the necessity to optimise resources, reduce costs, and increase traceability and food safety, amongst other compelling arguments. However, it has also resulted in imbalances in power, investment barriers, reduced access to knowledge and the decreasing ability of farmers and SMEs to control and benefit from their agricultural related activities. This paper considers the legal, governance, institutional and economic issues that may arise in developing a data cooperative or other equitable data sharing structures, taking into account public and private sources of data, and multi-stakeholders involved. A review of successful data sharing examples, including cooperatives, is presented and a test case from the cooperatives of Almería, Spain is considered. This research falls within the context of the EU H2020 project Internet of Food and Farm (IoF2020) and the development of innovative data sharing business models. Rather than falling back on classical contracting arrangements for data sharing, as proposed by Copa-Cogeca, amongst others, it is proposed that a “data commons†approach in keeping with Elinor Ostrom’s SocialEcological Systems Framework be used to frame a cooperative solution to this complex, systems based, challenge. By choosing a cooperative approach, benefits to farmers may go beyond “monetization†of data, and contribute to safeguarding environmental goods.