 Hi, I'm Mark Hall with Alabama Cooperative Extension System, here with John Fulton from Ohio State. John, we've been talking about big data, and we were talking off camera about how they collected on you, but on farmers. Is it a worry, big data, just so much out there, and this AI, it's not like my income tax records or records I've had in the past. They can figure out what they need to know about John Fulton and Mark Hall and the wheat field and the corn field. Well, I think, you know, when we think about the farmer, that's a business operation. And so, you know, we think about big data as it relates to maybe the Amazons and Googles. That's more of a consumer world and maybe not completely a business world. But, you know, exposing yourself, I mean, you know, I guess there are a level concern there, but it's just a matter of making the right decisions. I think when we think about this whole, we've been talking about digital agriculture in this session, you know, the fact is you're going to want to share data, right? I'm going to call Mark Hall for certain aspects and can you help me out, and I'm going to have to use others as well. But to be able to have access to that data, to be able to share that data, collect the data, becomes all sudden really important. And if I'm just collecting it, it's all going potentially to one platform or one cloud, and I really can't, I might be able to access it, but I can't share it very effectively with others. That's really limited in my capacity to do business on this world of digital agriculture. So, you know, we're not going to, you know, touch on everything as it relates to this, but you know, today collecting that data becomes important. If you're a grower and you're wanting to utilize some of these prescriptive services, you know, I'll tell you, most of people will ask you, you know, where's your yield data? Can you provide some yield data? And so having that data, if you're not collecting that data, really the potential value that they might bring to your farm or to that field is, could be limited, because you don't have it. And so that becomes a very important aspect. Again, sitting down having a digital strategy for your farm becomes very important as you know. And the other thing we talk about a lot, I mean, we think about this is, you know, you never know two, three, five years down the road what opportunities might exist as this idea around digital tools and analytics, big data grows. So what I collect today may not be very valuable, may not be usable today, but man, five years when you look back and someone looks at you and says, hey, I need your last 10 years of yield data, for example, and you don't have it. Well, now you got to build that field history, that field database back up to be able to participate. So these are things you got to begin to think about. And so, you know, this is just a note and we're talking about it in the consumer world and Alexa and other things that are, you know, the Googles and such. I mean, the fact that sensors are all around us is growing. It's coming to agriculture. We talked again about people were connected. The machines now are becoming connected. The implements potentially are in some cases are connected. The field's going to be connected. Machines can communicate with each other today. If you've got two or three machines, you can buy technology where they can share coverage maps. The AB lines for your guidance can be shared right then and there. But then at the end of the day, you know, the key I think when we think about data, this whole sustainability, this environmental verification that we're starting to talk about, that data is probably going to be a very important ingredient to show the public that as a grower, that I'm being a good steward of the land and the environment and being sustainable in the practices I use as we explore and what that actually will mean. But data is probably going to be a key driver and all that mark. So this is just an exhaustive list as we think about precision A, prescriptive ag, and all this stuff. You know, there's just a lot of data today. And even the USDA here in the United States is trying to make more public data available. I mean, I forget the number they say it's 800 and they're on the road to having 1200 data layers that are accessible to the public. And there's value to that. Making it accessible means I can access it, I can use it. But as a grower, these are key areas that I think spatially whether that's a map, per se, or non-spatial and production information that we're seeing companies build apps and such that provide and collect data on today at the farm level, field level that is as well. So it's exciting times like we talked about. I can watch that planner from an app remotely, know what's happening out there. I can summarize that. But again, this is very accessible right at your fingertips type scenarios and it's being collected. And I can use it anytime thereafter or post-harvest to utilize as you kind of dive in some of the final post-harvest analysis. So today, to me, Mark, you know, and it's just, again, like individuals, the farmstead, the farm has to decide about storage. And the way I think we're heading is cloud storage. I mean, who doesn't have, whether they recognize or not, have a cloud account? Yes. iCloud, OneDrive, Box, Dropbox, they're growing. And the point about this is not only are they growing, but it makes it accessible as long as you're connected to the internet worldwide. But it's cheap. It's cheap. Look at the Amazon. Of course, they're kind of the leaders in the world and AWS in terms of storing data it's hardly anything for a gigabyte a year today. And so storage is not a problem. I mean, if you kind of put that into some tangible numbers there and we figure that half kilobyte per plant, per corn plant that is per year, that's $300 a year for a 5,000 acre farm. I mean, what do you spend on your cell service? More net. More net. I mean, it's getting to where it's nothing. And so I think my point is, is worldwide, the internet cloud storage is going to be at least here in the near and midterm key for storing data. What I would tell you is most of all the ag industry is using AWS in some fashion to store data today. Data quality, just to kind of touch on this, Mark, I mean, when we think about digital ag, and what's the first question any grower asks you, Mark? How to make money? Yeah, Mike Money, you got it. How do I make money? And you're asking now these digital tools, what's the value? Well, some of the key is the fact that I better be collecting quality yield data, quality data on my farm. And so you have to take an appreciation. I might have to do a little calibration. I'm going to have to store and organize that data so people can access and use it, whether whoever that might be that your trusted advisor is. But if it's not of quality, garbage in is garbage out. And so I just remind everyone that there's other parts of the data. Like maybe as a company, I'm not so concerned about that yield map, but I'm concerned about the data that I can get. So there's different things and different elements of the data that might be important to different people, specific companies. But for me as a grower, if I really want to get tangible benefit, I better be collecting quality data at the field level where I'm just not going to see that benefit. Or I might be making the wrong decision for myself that could impact me for a few years to come. And so accurate data becomes very important for me as an individual grower. And just as a point there, most of these services will say they want three to eight years of good yield data, could be four or five in a lot of cases. And if I'm not collecting it or I don't have it stored where I can get access to it, Mark, guess what? We're storing the ground zero. That's a lot of data. Four years, eight years, 10 years of field data for. What is average size farm in Ohio, John? I mean, it just gets bigger and bigger. I'd say somewhere in the mid 2000s. Yeah, probably around the year that that's a lot of data. And being able to organize it and put it to use is a real key. So data quality and the other thing I thought we would kind of talk about, this is the new big thing that we're talking about, data aggregation. We used that in the definition of big data, bringing farms' data across the country or similar together and being able to query and look at it in a different way than just as an individual. And there's value, right? We've seen other industries, especially in medical profession, what they can learn about cancer drugs and things. But data aggregation leads to this idea around big data. Think about the accelerated learning that goes on. How many times have you done some nitrogen or seeding rate trials, Mark? Well, if I can give you 200 of those rather than managing three and know the data quality, you're probably going to have a lot more confidence. You're going to have a lot more that you can learn. And so it's just going to, maybe what it took us three years to learn, I can get done in two years because I'm working over different regions today and different environments, and I can bring all that together. And I'm just going to accelerate learning. And so even as a farmer, I've got to be thinking that way. Typically, you had 40 years. Maybe I can accelerate your learning in that process. And things are changing. So John, particularly varieties, to make a variety of recommendation, they used to say you had to have three years data. Three years is obsolete. I mean, we got to go. Yeah, and again, we've got a ways to go until this. But if we can aggregate it, we can get farmers comfortable that it's not exposing them in any which way. I think we're going to bring a higher and accelerated learning path here. And the other thing, if we think about what's kind of going on, is we're always talking about phenotype in. And we're talking a lot about the genomics people and what they're trying to do. Well, think about if we can take their world and we can take what goes on at the field level world and put those together more rapidly and understand things. Again, these are things that are coming down the road that can really accelerate going back to your, how's a variety respond? Does it truly respond? We can bring more confidence. And then you can benchmark your farm. Yes. I mean, how am I doing? And we talk a lot about why I don't want my neighbor to know, but if I can do it in a way that doesn't really expose me, maybe I can look at people that are very similar to me in terms of size, the practices. I can look at my productivity. I can look at my business sheets and the benchmarking if people aren't providing it to some level already, whether that's kind of profit, whether that's yield or such type agronomics, they're talking about it behind the scenes and trying to get that benchmarking to kind of the big thing that's going on and being provided to the farmer. Now, there is some things, the cons of data aggregation. I guess we just need to kind of bring these up. It exposes you, you know? And I guess that can be a positive and negative. You get value, as long as you're getting value from it, you're happy about it. But if you're not getting value, well, you know, you know, there becomes the discussion maybe as one aspect. But benchmarking or aggregation, when you get into that, it starts to really establish value and your value against other people, again, just something to think about. Boy, it's got that land value, so it looks like eventually we'll be tied to this. It seems like the potentially data, if I've got data and I can, there potentially could be some, you know, helping improve land prices or and such, and we know people are already using data, right? I can take some of the data on my farm and known as soils of a farm that might be considered. I can kind of do some modeling and project what my bottom line might be. And so we're seeing some of that. And then the other thing is who owns aggregated data sets? You know, IP and all that way, maybe it's not important in some days in our lives, Mark, but you know, these are things you got to kind of wrangle with a little bit. Yeah, nobody wants anybody else meddling in their business and it's scary. Yeah, and so I think we'll get there. I think we'll be able to put policies and things in play to make sure that farmers at the end of the day go and back to our prior slide. This big data thing will bring value and it's shown out in some other professions out there that we've mentioned, the retail, medical in particular. So just some ideas and end up, you know, collecting data may limit my participation, my utilization of some of these digital tools out there. Data quality is important. And at least as of today, handshakes are great, but now we're working in a data world and having some terms and conditions and some things understanding, but people you trust are still important. And I do think that day-to-day, we've seen some evidence of this already, but data aggregation is gonna maximize potential and value generation at that farm, so. John, as always, man, you make my brain sales. Watch them synapses are going off. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. And thank you for that. Watch all our precision ag videos. John has a habit of doing that. He will challenge your thinking. Thank you for watching these.