Participated in a couple events on this topics topic in late January
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One hosted by ODI, Global Partnership for AI and Aapti exploring whether a data trust is a feasible model for farmers to pool data and get access to advisories that promote climate resilience. More on their project here
What ODI/GPAI/Aapti are looking for are use cases where there is potential community demand for a data trust; they are keen to support such an initiative in prototyping the idea.
Short answer, accessing advisories is not a compelling enough hook to get farmers to pool data. If data is going to be collected, makes sense to leverage it for multiple purposes like certifications and access to credit.
One of the attendees was Nipun from The Agri Collaboratory (TAC, more here) who reiterated this point. He is exploring whether a trust makes sense for a farmer credit scoring model. I think we may have come across them in our FS work, rikin (Unlicensed) and Vineet Singh can add more
An interesting thread on who is the data trustee. It can be a civil society organisation, or a group of members of a cooperative. The Non Personal Data Report in India says that non-profits or even govt organisations can serve as trustees, but in an ideal scenario, it has to be a group nominated by the members of the trust to serve as trustees. Important to note that there are legal burdens placed on the trustee so they need a real incentive to play this role
One positive aspect of trusts, esp in India is that there is a strong legal underpinning; over a hundred years of trust law and jurisprudence that could be useful.
MIRO board from the session here.
Birchip Cropping Group from Australia was called out as an interesting model; farmers
This is a nice post on the idea of “bottoms up data institutions” which is relevant to our DFN approach
I could see this group being a useful resource to bounce ideas as we develop DFN and I believe we have engaged with ODI previously as part of FS as well. Shreya Agarwal (Unlicensed)
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