Speaking at the launch of SoilHive Open Source, WFO Secretary General Andrea Porro called for farmer-centred data infrastructure that maximises farm returns, safeguards data rights and keeps farmers in control of their data.

On 20 August 2026, Andrea Porro, Secretary General of the World Farmers’ Organisation (WFO), participated in “Introducing SoilHive Open Source: Building an Open Soil Data Ecosystem,” the virtual event marking the launch of SoilHive Open Source. The platform, developed by the Varda Foundation, aims to improve management, sharing and reuse of soil data. Porro is also a member of the Varda Foundation’s Board of Directors.

Soil data is essential for sustainable agriculture, climate resilience, environmental research and informed policymaking. Yet much of the world’s soil data remains fragmented, difficult to access and challenging to reuse across different systems.

SoilHive seeks to address this challenge as an open-source soil data platform built on a federated model. It makes data discoverable across different instances and provides organisations with a shared foundation for managing and using soil data while allowing them to retain control over what they share, when and with whom.

By avoiding the centralisation of ownership or control in a single institution, this approach supports soil data sovereignty and the development of a federated soil data ecosystem. It also creates a shared foundation for innovation in digital agriculture, research and data-driven services.

SoilHive is part of the project “Establishing an Ecosystem of Soil Data-Driven Services,” funded by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) and implemented in partnership with the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF) and the Coalition of Action 4 Soil Health (CA4SH). The initiative also benefits from the co-development support of four institutional partners in Ghana, Tanzania, Kenya and Malawi.

In his intervention, Porro focused on how farm data infrastructure can maximise returns while minimising risks, stressing that agricultural data systems must be designed around farmers’ data rights and needs. He linked this principle to the WFO Policy on Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence, adopted by WFO members, which affirms that data infrastructure and the value generated from agricultural data must be farmer-centric, rather than merely technically efficient.

The WFO Secretary General highlighted the importance of open and interoperable data standards. Interoperable soil and farm data can enable farmers to combine information on soil, weather, markets and yields within a single decision-making framework. The value of agricultural data infrastructure, he noted, lies not only in the data itself, but also in its ability to support better agronomic and marketing decisions.

Porro also addressed how to protect farmers’ agricultural data, stressing that related risks should be managed at the infrastructure level rather than left to individual farmers to negotiate. Local or edge processing, tiered access and the use of aggregated or anonymised information can allow farmers to generate value from their data while keeping granular operational information private.

Clear and transparent agricultural data governance is equally important. Farmers must be able to understand what data is collected, how long it is retained and who is entitled to resell it.

“For us, the goals of risk minimisation and return maximisation converge on the same solution: infrastructure that keeps farmers as data controllers rather than data sources,” said Andrea Porro.

Looking ahead, Porro called for public and blended investment in farm data infrastructure. He noted that rural connectivity funds and climate finance instruments, including the Green Climate Fund and the Adaptation Fund, should consider agricultural data infrastructure as an investment in a public good.

Such public funding for agricultural data infrastructure could help extend the benefits of digital agriculture to areas with poor connectivity. It will be key to ensuring that smallholders and small-scale farmers are not structurally excluded and that the benefits of data-driven agriculture do not become concentrated among larger operators.

Concluding his intervention, Porro reaffirmed WFO’s commitment to the SoilHive journey and encouraged continued collaboration among farmers, governments and partners to support the platform’s full operationalisation.

Rewatch the webinar and view the presentation, learn more about the project and its partners, explore the SoilHive open-source platform or browse the GitHub repository.

Cover photo: Screenshot from the online event “Introducing SoilHive Open Source: Building an Open Soil Data Ecosystem”