January 2026
By J. Scott Angle
[email protected]
@IFAS_VP
You can trust your Extension agents to keep conversations with you private.
We’re learning that, in addition to a handshake agreement about on-farm work, you want to know that we’re protecting your sensitive data about yields, fertilizer use, irrigation and soil health – what sets your farm apart from your competition. Great partnerships and handshakes can go a long way, but these days we also need policies, protocols, and technology to help protect your data.
This fall, Florida Farm Bureau President Jeb S. Smith asked us important questions, like how is farm data collected? Stored? Shared? Protected? And how do we allow legitimate retrieval of certain parts of the data without letting the whole cat out of the bag?
We didn’t have good enough answers for him. You can trust us to listen and then to act on what we hear.
Our first act was a two-day UF/IFAS Agricultural Data Use & Privacy Summit we hosted in December, kicked off by none other than President Smith.
Here’s how he teed it up: Protecting data is like wearing clothes. If you don’t do it, you’re naked, exposed and vulnerable.
It can be a very thin layer that keeps us modest and presentable, but it’s got to be there. And we need to make sure we answer the data world equivalent of just what is business casual? It’s OK if someone shows up in a suit and tie to a blue jeans meeting. Not so good if we don’t “clothe” data in privacy and it escapes to anti-agriculture activists, competitors, or even saboteurs.
We brought together our best minds on the subject. We invited experts from industry and government from across the nation. Inspired by President Smith’s call to action and his relaying of your concerns, we got off to a great start working out new ways to keep your data private in an environment that changes rapidly.
Not using artificial intelligence and not using data are not options. In fact, your Field Services team recently asked us to give them presentations on how to apply AI in their work to free them up from administrative tasks so that they can spend more time visiting with you. We hosted them just a week before the summit.
The summit set us on a course to fast-track the development of protocols, platforms and tools to protect your data privacy. You can trust us to give this our full attention until we get it done and done right. This effort will benefit all sides of our partnerships.
The handshake era, at least when it comes to data, is ending.
As President Smith said, you can’t afford to let the world know your secrets when you’re in a global competition for market share. And the release of raw data without context can be devastating to a producer if someone else makes up a story with that data.
President Smith and I have our own handshake deal (actually with President Smith, it’s a handshake and a hug). He lets me know what you need and where we’re falling short. I let him know what we can do to help and the resources available.
Our handshake relationship works because the people in our two organizations built a foundation of trust over decades.
So, the latest challenge is not just about protecting your data. It’s about protecting your trust in us.
Scott Angle is the University of Florida’s Senior Vice President for Agriculture and Natural Resources and leader of the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS).