Episode Details

Eighty-seven percent of surveyed producers couldn't say they'd signed a data-sharing agreement. Ninety-two percent have never been paid a cent for the data.

Those numbers come from the American Dairy Coalition's poll of 657 dairy producers, conducted February 24 to March 14, 2026. The Bullvine Podcast traces where that data actually goes: from your FARM Environmental Stewardship evaluation, through co-op aggregation, into corporate Scope 3 disclosures, and finally into loan pricing that swings a borrower's margin 5 to 25 basis points. The FARM Version 2028 comment window closes October 2.

What You'll Learn

• Why "voluntary" may describe your co-op's enrollment, not your consent
• The five steps between your bulk tank and somebody's cost of capital
• What Dutch farmers get paid for the same data — and the deposit they fund themselves
• Why Nebraska's farm data law protects the input and carves out the output
• The two Ag Data Transparent questions that reach aggregation
• What to ask your co-op this week, and what to file before October 2

FrieslandCampina paid member farms €2.63 per 100 kg in sustainability premiums for 2023 — roughly $1.06/cwt net after the cooperative deposit, or about $58,000 a year on a 200-cow herd shipping 75 pounds. In the U.S. there's no index, no exchange, and no rate at all. Nobody in the chain is breaking a rule. The value just flows one direction, and there's currently no place in the structure to send any of it back.

Full article and sources: https://www.thebullvine.com/news/farm-data-ownership-october-deadline/ Subscribe for straight-talking dairy analysis. Share this with a producer who needs it.