Data Act: Legal Implications for the Digital Agriculture Sector

Abstract

On 23 February 2022, the proposal of the Data Act containing ‘harmonised rules on fair access and use of data’ was released. It is a horizontal framework for data access to unlock competition and innovation. The emerging Digital Agriculture sector is one of the non-personal data-driven industries that can be affected by this horizontal intervention. Therefore, it is highly relevant to investigate the possible implications of the Data Act from the sectoral perspective. This paper aims to demonstrate what the Data Act brings, to what extent it is helpful to overcome the sectoral problems connected to ag-data access, and how it can be fine-tuned to increase its effectiveness for the sector. Thus, the paper also aims to identify the remaining issues that may need to be addressed by a follow-up sectoral regulation.

Keywords: Smart farming, digital agriculture, exclusive data control, data access, data portability, data governance, Data Act, sectoral regulation