
Janzen Ag Tech Blog
275 FOLLOWERS
The Janzen Ag Tech Blog contains articles about the intersection of agriculture, technology, and law. All articles are original content, authored by attorney Todd Janzen. Founded in 2015, Janzen Ag Law, now Janzen Schroeder Ag Law, is a law firm focused on the legal needs of a vibrant agricultural industry.
Janzen Ag Tech Blog
3d ago
Online revenue management platforms for landlords are being challenged as price fixing tools. What will the implications be for tenant farmers ..read more
Janzen Ag Tech Blog
3M ago
The 45Z tax credit for production of sustainable fuels will require farmers to verify compliance with ag data ..read more
Janzen Ag Tech Blog
7M ago
The following article is a summary of my presentation to the 32nd Annual No-Till Conference written by Landon Swan, No-Till Farmer Magazine, regarding the ag data issues arising from the USDA’s Partnership for Climate Smart Commodities.
Ag data has become increasingly important to not only farmers, but corporate companies like McDonalds and PepsiCo as well. In recent years, the USDA and other government agencies have taken significant strides in leveraging agricultural data to drive climate-smart initiatives across the U.S., according to Todd Janzen, agricultural attorney at Janzen Schroeder A ..read more
Janzen Ag Tech Blog
8M ago
Playing basketball in my younger days, I remember one thing would happen in practice after any loss—the coach would make you go back to practice basic fundamentals. Dribble. Pass. Shoot. It was a good life lesson. Any time you find yourself facing an overwhelming problem, break the problem down into the basics. With the rise of modern digital contracts, where a mere “click” means you just bought 100 rolls of toilet paper, I think digital contract providers would be wise to go back to the contract fundamentals.
At any contract’s core, are three elements: an offer, an acceptance of the offer, an ..read more
Janzen Ag Tech Blog
10M ago
In 2014, American Farm Bureau Federation led industry roundtable discussions about collection, use, and sharing of agricultural data from farmers. The result of those discussions was the creation of a document called the Privacy and Security Principles for Farm Data, what later became knowns as the “Core Principles” for ag data. Over 37 companies quickly pledged to uphold these principles in 2014 (many failed to live up to that pledge). The Ag Data Transparent (ADT) used these principles as the foundation for the ADT certification, which over 40 companies have achieved. But technology (and far ..read more
Janzen Ag Tech Blog
10M ago
Climate change has brought new words into our vocabularies that barely existed a decade ago. Two words frequently used when discussing reduction of the carbon footprint for agriculture are “insets” and “offsets.” This post explores these terms as they pertain specifically to agriculture. As a threshold matter, these are not legal terms and are thus somewhat imprecise and not universally defined and accepted.
Carbon Offsets. The EPA defines an “offset” as a project that is intended to reduce green house gas (GHG) emissions, increase the storage of carbon, or enhance GHG ..read more
Janzen Ag Tech Blog
11M ago
Midwestern politicians are drumming up support for increased oversight of foreign ownership of US agricultural farmland. At the state and federal level, there are bills seeking to reduce or increase reporting obligations for foreign ownership of farmland. Arkansas even went so far as to order Syngenta (whose parent company is Chinese) to divest 160 acres of Arkansas farmland used for research and development. Although these efforts may seem new, the reality is that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has been requiring “foreign persons” to identify themselves when pu ..read more
Janzen Ag Tech Blog
1y ago
Farm Journal’s recent article featured one of our long-fought cases against the Indiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR) for crop damage (Damned by Data: State Destroys Farmer’s Yield, Pays $810,000 in Damages). As explained in the article, our case depended on explaining periodic and partial flooding of farm fields over a course of years to the court. Fortunately, our client, Charlie Houin, had been collecting good data about the Houin family farm fields for years. And this helped us win our case.
The Houin case involved a lake dam that had been mismanaged by the Indiana DNR. About a doz ..read more
Janzen Ag Tech Blog
1y ago
Artificial intelligence (AI) use is on the rise in agriculture and elsewhere, thanks to generative AI platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. AI is often described as a Black Box, where data is fed into the box and decisions are made, without anyone knowing exactly how the Black Box arrived at the result. Considering that the AI decisions are made in secrecy, is there room for a discussion of transparency when talking about AI? Yes.
AI tools require vast amounts of training data to make informed, accurate decisions. Where that training data originated, and from whom, matters when building an AI tool ..read more
Janzen Ag Tech Blog
1y ago
I was fortunate to be asked to testify before the US Senate Agricultural Committee recently about the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on agriculture. Although AI and its simpler cousin machine learning (ML) have operated behind the scenes for years already, 2023 is the first time that AI and ML really entered the public discourse. It is clear to me that agriculture, like other industries, needs time to digest what AI means for the future. This post explores how to apply AI’s often discussed legal issues to agriculture.
Bias. AI “bias” refers to the implicit biases in the values that det ..read more