Disrupting with AI & IoT: Who owns the data?

IoT & the data it will generate is going to disrupt businesses – both in a good and a bad way. CNN Tech covered how a tomato grower is leveraging sensors, IoT and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to increase yields, eventually, as much as 20%. When you are growing millions of pounds of tomatoes a year – this is a significant number.

NatureSweet has six tomato farms in US and Mexico. They have deployed AI technology from an Israeli digital farming company Prospera. Prospera uses imaging to detect issues related to farming such as insect infestations or dying plants. Prospera technology has enabled 24/7 monitoring of the plants in contrast to once a week manual inspection.

Undoubtedly as time goes by the Prospera system is going to improve with real world plant data, and NatureSweet would benefit. However the ownership of the plant data being obtained by the Prospera system could also benefit other tomato growers.

I posit that contractual ownership of data, and the resulting gains in algorithmic efficiency would be key to either disrupt or be disrupted. In the beginning NatureSweet would have an advantage over competition – improved yields leading to increased profitability but as the Prospera solution enhances it could enable NatureSweet’s competition to benefit.

Note – the video that autoplays is for another digital farming company – Bowery and NOT for NatureSweet or Prospera.

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