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Abstract
Modern farm machinery captures geocoded data on all aspects of a farming operation. These detailed datasets are called big data. Although some of this data is useful to individual farmers, much of it has little value to the farmer that collects it. Capturing the true value of big data comes when it is aggregated over many farms, allowing researchers to find underlying trends. To analyze farmers willingness to share data we conduct a hypothetical choice experiment that asked farmers in Saskatchewan whether they would join a big data program. The choice tasks varied the type of organization that operated the big data program, and included financial and non-financial incentives. Heteroscedastic and random effects probit models are presented using data from a survey constructed for this study. The results are consistent across models and find that farmers are most willing to share their data with university researchers, followed by crop input suppliers or grower associations, and financial institutions or equipment manufacturers. Farmers are least willing to share their data with government. Farmers are more willing to share data in the presence of a financial incentive or non-financial incentive such as comparative benchmark statistics or prescription maps generated from the data submitted.
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