Agriculture is a practice affected by loads of variables that are often not well understood. Farmers could definitely benefit from products that could be created by applying data science to all the information collected from other farmers, the government, remote sensing, etc.
The problem is, ag data is a commodity. People/organizations can gather, mine, and create new products with it. It's always been that way, except the past few years have seen the types and amount of data being gathered, and the speed at which it can be analyzed growing rapidly.
And farmers just are supposed to give this commodity away for free? An action which--whether done for free or for profit--might have some short-term benefits, but may run counter to their interests in the long-term?
