Last week, data servicer Farmobile acquired the assets of Prime Meridian, a precision agriculture data management company out of Nevada, Mo. The move aims to utilize Prime Meridian’s advisors in data analysis and agronomy for Farmobile’s new data stewardship offering, DataServices.

Steve Cubbage, the former president of Prime Meridian, now joins Farmobile as vice president of the DataServices team. At the InfoAg show in St. Louis this week, I sat down with both Cubbage and Farmobile CEO Jason Tatge to discuss the implications of the acquisition.  

As explained by Tatge, DataServices will streamline the certification of electronic field records for growers, distinguishing quality data that can potentially used to generate revenue. Those field records serve as the nucleus for Farmobile’s DataStore, launched earlier this week as the first private digital exchange platform for machine and agronomic data between growers and purchasers of data.

The DataStore, Cubbage adds, aims to give farmers the ability to leverage their data and accept or reject bids from buyers in a secure format.

It's a new opportunity for growers to sell a new crop, and that crop is data. Truthfully, this is new opportunity that growers haven't had in the past, and those that really want to look into it, there is a difference between good and bad data. Good data has value in the marketplace, and truthfully that's what we want to see. It's certainly an opportunity that drives other opportunities on the farm. Good data also means good decisions at the farm level, but now there's an opportunity to get $2-$4 ... hopefully $10-$20 an acre per year by selling data in the marketplace to research farms, to universities. The host of buyers is ... we probably don't even know yet. The nice thing is the grower is in control. He makes the decisions who that buyer is, and whether or not he wants to sell..

As it currently stands, Tatge says the DataStore has one million acres worth of data available for sale.