The Role of Privacy in Digitalization – Analyzing Perspectives of German Farmers

Abstract

Technological progress can disrupt domains and change the way we work and collaborate. This paper presents a qualitative study with 52 German farmers that investigates the impact of the ongoing digitalization process in agriculture and discusses the implications for privacy research. As in other domains, the introduction of digital tools and services leads to the data itself becoming a resource. Sharing this data with products along the supply chain is favored by retailers and consumers, who benefit from traceability through transparency. However, transparency can pose a privacy risk. Having insight into the business data of others along the supply chain provides an advantage in terms of market position. This is particularly true in agriculture, where there is already a significant imbalance of power between actors. A multitude of small and medium-sized farming businesses are opposed by large upstream and downstream players that drive technological innovation. Further weakening the market position of farmers could lead to severe consequences for the entire sector. We found that on the one hand, privacy behaviors are affected by adoption of digitalization, and on the other hand, privacy itself influences adoption of digital tools. Our study sheds light on the emerging challenges for farmers and the role of privacy in the process of digitalization in agriculture.

Resilience in Agriculture: Communication and Energy Infrastructure Dependencies of German Farmers

“…Surprisingly, such risks were neither mentioned by the farmers themselves nor present in the literature. We see the first reason for this missing awareness in the lack of extensive implementation, possibly due to risk aversion in the adoption of new technologies (Marra et al 2003 ), data protection concerns (Linsner et al 2021 ), or the partly unreliable mobile data connection in Germany, especially in rural areas (Fig. 3 ).…”

“…The entire process, which comprised the creation of an interview guideline, recruitment of participants, conducting the focus groups, and data analysis and storage, followed the guidelines of the ethical commission of the Technical University of Darmstadt. Some results of these focus groups have already been published in a scientific journal (Linsner et al 2021 ); however, the data were analyzed with a different scope and purpose.…”

LoRaWAN security issues and mitigation options by the example of agricultural IoT scenarios

“…Lack of IT knowledge The end‐users (eg, farmers) should not be treated as IT experts with knowledge about specifics of IT security 24,27,31 as well as IoT specifics 21 . Facing an heavy workload, the farmers' time budgets are limited 32,33 . Therefore, agricultural IoT solutions need to be ready to use without difficult and time‐consuming manual steps. Sensing and acting Devices used in IoT scenarios are both sensors and actuators.…”

“…21 Facing an heavy workload, the farmers' time budgets are limited. 32,33 Therefore, agricultural IoT solutions need to be ready to use without difficult and time-consuming manual steps. (d) Sensing and acting Devices used in IoT scenarios are both sensors and actuators.…”

Proof-of-Vax: Studying User Preferences and Perception of Covid Vaccination Certificates

“…Various studies have found that privacy plays an important role in decision-making about digital tools and interacting with online technology in a broad range of applications [11,29,47]. Ray et al [40] study privacy concerns among adults of two different age groups, finding that older adults are more concerned about global privacy threats.…”