Agricultural Data Privacy Bills Spreading Across the Farm Belt

The first successful legislative effort to change this began in November 2014, when a coalition of farm groups and agriculture technology providers convened to develop the Privacy and Security Principles for Farm Data. These Core Principles were intended to establish baseline guidelines around farmer ownership, consent for data collection, transparency, portability, and limitations on sale and disclosure. 

Over 37 companies pledged to follow the Core Principles, and the Ag Data Transparent organization was formed to certify compliance through a voluntary 11-question evaluation process. The system remained entirely voluntary; there was no enforcement mechanism, no penalties for non-compliance, and no legal obligation to participate. This remains the status quo in every state except Nebraska.

Nebraska’s LB525: The First Mandatory Framework

Nebraska changed the landscape on April 14 when Governor Jim Pillen signed the Agricultural Data Privacy Act (LB525) into law, making Nebraska the first state in the nation to impose mandatory, enforceable obligations around agricultural data ownership. The bill passed the state’s unicameral legislature by a unanimous vote of 49-0. 

The law adopts a property-rights framework rather than a consent-based privacy model. It codifies that an agricultural producer is the owner of, and has control over, the agricultural data originating from their farm, land, device, or equipment. Controllers and processors receive only a nonexclusive right to use such data — solely for providing services, maintaining equipment, or performing authorized processing — and that right expressly excludes the power to sell the data without the producer’s written consent. The law defines “agricultural data” broadly across six categories (agronomic, climate and weather, land, livestock, management, and sustainability data), provided the data is linked or reasonably linked to an identified or identifiable agricultural producer. Aggregated data, derived data, and data made public by a government agency are excluded.

Enforcement rests exclusively with the Nebraska Attorney General (AG), who may seek injunctive relief or recover civil penalties of $1,000 per violation after a written notice and 45-day cure period. There is no private right of action. Beginning January 1, 2027, every new contract involving the collection or processing of agricultural data must contain a provision prohibiting the sale of such data without the producer’s express written consent. Any contractual provision that waives or limits the Act’s requirements is void and unenforceable.

Three New Bills Push the Model Further

Within months of Nebraska’s enactment, legislators in Iowa, Colorado, and Missouri introduced agricultural data bills that take the Nebraska template and substantially expand it. Iowa’s H8407 was introduced as an amendment to a right-to-repair bill for farm equipment. Colorado’s HB 26-1270 and Missouri’s HB 3409 were introduced as standalone legislation titled the “Agricultural Data Ownership and Market Competition Act.” Iowa and Missouri remain pending as of this writing; Colorado’s bill is now being held indefinitely in committee this session, but may return next session. Each of these bills shares a common architecture: they adopt the ownership-based model Nebraska pioneered, but overlay it with a robust set of producer monetization rights and significantly enhanced enforcement mechanisms. They also share a conceptual innovation absent from LB525: a distinction between raw agricultural data (unprocessed factual observations and measurements that cannot be copyrighted) and transformed agricultural data (data processed through proprietary algorithms or analytical methods sufficient to produce copyrightable intellectual property (IP)). Agricultural producers retain ownership of both categories and may copyright, distribute, license, or sell transformed data in any market.

On enforcement, the shift is dramatic. Where Nebraska provides only attorney general enforcement and $1,000 per violation, all three pending bills create private rights of action with statutory damages of up to $10,000 per violation, civil penalties of up to $50,000 per violation, injunctive relief, and awards of attorney fees and costs. Violations are classified as unfair or deceptive trade practices under each state’s existing consumer protection statute.

All three bills prohibit data service providers from preventing producers from monetizing their data, imposing exclusive-rights provisions without fair compensation and informed consent, or discriminating against producers based on their monetization decisions. All three require fair market value compensation and transparent accounting when a data service provider commercializes transformed agricultural data. And all three void any attempt to waive or limit producer rights through terms-of-service agreements, clickwrap agreements, or end-user license agreements.

Side-By-Side Comparison: Nebraska, Iowa, Colorado, and Missouri

Key Differences 

The Colorado, Missouri, and Iowa bills share the ownership-plus-monetization architecture, but each introduces distinctive features.

• Colorado’s Excise Tax and Voter Referendum: Colorado’s bill is notable for its 3% excise tax on data transactions involving transformed agricultural data that occur within Colorado or involve Colorado agricultural producers. Revenue would flow to the Colorado Agricultural Future Loan Program Cash Fund supporting young producers. 

• Missouri’s Market Concentration Cap: Missouri imposes a limit on agricultural data market concentration. A data collector (including its affiliates) may not collect agricultural data from producers whose combined operations exceed 25% of the agricultural acreage or the harvested animals in any one Missouri county. Missouri also applies state sales tax, instead of an excise tax like in Colorado’s bill, to agricultural data transactions.

• Iowa’s Right-to-Repair Integration: Iowa’s bill is embedded within broader right-to-repair legislation for farm equipment, which may link data portability and ownership rights to equipment access requirements.

The emergence of agricultural data bills reveals that agricultural data ownership allocation is now top of mind for state legislators. Companies that collect, process, or commercialize agricultural data should begin preparing now, as compliance with these laws will soon become unavoidable. 

If you have questions about how this bill may affect your business, please reach out to your ArentFox Schiff contact or a member of the firm’s Privacy & Data Security group or the firm’s Agriculture & AgTech group.