100 years of data sovereignty: Cooperative data governance and innovation in US dairy

Abstract

We discuss a little-known but highly successful approach to innovation and data governance observed in the U.S. dairy sector. The National Cooperative Dairy Herd Improvement Program (NCDHIP) is a century-old institution that coordinates farm data collection to support research on dairy cattle breeding and genetic selection. After discussing the program's history, we discuss how its evolution can inform data governance in agriculture today. We identify three key attributes that make the NCDHIP a successful model in agriculture: overcoming free-riding with member benefits to data providers, ensuring data interoperability with uniform data standards, and controlling data access and use with cooperative governance.