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NFU’s Johnson concerned about grain data sharing

A farmer organization is concerned about how improper use of technology might hurt farmers when it’s time to sell what they grow.

National Farmers Union President Roger Johnson tells Brownfield the announcement by grain traders Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Louis Dreyfus, and Cargill to use integrated data technology has the potential for collusion, which would hurt farmers.  Johnson tells Brownfield, “What it really does is it takes market-related data, puts it together and then spits it back out to each of those four entities, so they all know what everybody else is doing.  That is by definition collusion.”

Johnson says this might lead to competitors sharing pricing information similar to what has happened in the livestock markets.  “Bu to the degree that that data then gets aggregated across farmers and used by others in the supply chain, that may not accrue to the benefit of the farmer, so that needs some attention.”

Johnson says competitors sharing this kind of information is a violation of antitrust laws, which he says will be even harder to enforce if USDA successfully dissolves GIPSA.

From the American Antitrust Institute’s Food and Agriculture roundtable at the University of Wisconsin Law School, I’m Larry Lee on Brownfield.