John Deere’s stance on the ownership of field data was reaffirmed today during a press conference at the Commodity Classic in Florida.

During a briefing on additions to the company’s FarmSight precision agriculture solutions, Deere representative Nicholas Shafter stated, “We have a really clear message. Our customers are in control of their data. It's their information. And Deere is going to be transparent with what we are going to do with that information.”

The issue of field and machinery data ownership has come under debate recently. Although Shafter didn’t talk about that debate, he did confirm John Deere’s previous stance on the topic.

“As you can see ultimately (with the data being generated by Deere’s precision agriculture systems) the customer is in control of who has access to that information,” he said. “And from a John Deere perspective, we are going to be very transparent as we always have been around what we are going to do with any and all information (generated by our systems)."