It is here again — the end of another year.  For me, this is always a good time to take a look back at some of the big stories from the past year. Here is my recap of the four biggest ag law and ag tech stories from the Janzen Ag Law Blog, based upon reader feedback, page views, and reprints in 2017.

"Can a machine track and send data to the manufacturer without the owner's consent?" I think you could even broaden this question to ask: "Can a machine can send data to a manufacturer without the owners' knowledge?"

Equifax is just the latest company to disclose consumer's personal information. Yahoo, Anthem, Home Depot, and Target have all had data breaches within the last few years. These have resulted in class-action lawsuits delivering a few dollars back to consumers, but this rarely offsets the hassle and long-term problems these victims will face.

Ag tech providers that take little care to craft online privacy policies may find a court equally as dismissive of their stock policies. This is why I always suggest that ag tech companies spend some time on their online agreements, rather than just reusing form documents crafted for some other purpose.

At the Farm Progess Show this summer, New Holland rolled out a new concept tractor that appeared mostly conventional but had one stand out feature — it runs on methane rather than diesel. My first impression when seeing this was — didn't we have this same concept 50 years ago?

DuPont Pioneer's $300 million acquisition of Silicon Valley based Granular might have you wondering what happens to all that data a provider collects after it is sold? This post answers that question.

You would have to live under a rock to not have heard about farmers’ issues with dicamba this growing season. Arkansas banned the pesticide, Missouri temporarily banned and then changed the label, and complaints are skyrocketing in Indiana and Illinois.

In the race to the cloud, we must also be cautious so that the American farmer is not left behind. Today I will address the issues facing farmers as digitalization occurs and how the industry has begun to address these issues.

Over two years has passed since American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) led an industry coalition to address issues of surrounding ag data ownership, privacy, and security. When AFBF published the "Privacy and Security Principles for Farm Data"--or as I call them, the ag data's "Core Principles," I expected the industry uptake to be swift.