For our November meetup, we are excited to welcome Foteini Zampati, who is a legal professional with almost 20 years of experience. She holds an LLB in Law and LLM in European Union and Business Law. Foteini will be discussing data governance issues in digital agriculture. The presentation will focus on farmers’ perspective and how they could actively participate in a more equitable data sharing and exchange in the agri-food value chain by contributing to the design of a fairer data governance framework.

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Abstract

Data Governance Issues in digital agriculture. A farmer’s perspective.

There is no doubt that data-driven agriculture has increased the agricultural production and productivity, reduced the risk and improved resilience in farming, brought more economic and efficient use of natural resources, and helped farmers in decision making.

The key actors in agriculture, farmers in general and smallholder farmers in particular feel that they are not the ones who are harnessing the benefits of digital technologies and discourages them from fully adopting them.

Farmers have concerns about who controls access to, and sharing of, data that are generated on and their farms, they have concerns about their privacy and their data rights, and in many cases they are not fully aware of the benefits of digital farming. They need assurances of their data sharing and control, they seek transparency and trust.

This webinar will focus on farmers’ perspective and how they could actively participate in a more equitable data sharing and exchange in the agri-food value chain by contributing to the design of a fairer data governance framework. The development of ag codes of conduct is an example that will be explored.

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Speaker Bio

Foteini Zampati is a legal professional with almost 20 years of experience. She holds an LLB in Law and LLM in European Union and Business Law.

Currently she is working as an international freelance consultant on data privacy, compliance, and ethics. During her career Foteini has collaborated with various stakeholders, among them the United Nations of Food and Agriculture (FAO), the Kenyan Government, the German Corporation for International Cooperation GmbH (GIZ) on international projects to develop policies, codes of conducts and guidelines for fairer and more responsible data governance frameworks.

She has also worked as a data rights research specialist to support the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) initiative on Ethical and Legal aspects of Open data.

One of the main areas of her expertise is the research and analysis of national and international legislation on (Open) Data and Intellectual Property, ownership issues and data rights, compliance and best practices across all aspects of national and European privacy and security, as also data protection law and regulation (GDPR) in the agricultural sector.

Foteini participates as a keynote speaker in various conferences and meetings on data privacy and ethics. She authored and contributed to various scientific publications in data privacy and compliance area.