农民对自己所租用的土地数据的隐私性表示怀疑

农民对自己所租用的土地数据的隐私性表示怀疑

Parker Smith grows corn and soybeans on land near Champaign, Ill., together with his father and uncle. But Smith Farms doesn't own most of the land it uses. "About 75 percent of what we farm is rented ground," he says.

帕克·史密斯和他的父亲和叔叔一起在伊利诺伊州香槟附近的土地上种植玉米和大豆。但是史密斯农场并不拥有它使用的大部分土地。“我们大约75%的农场是租来的，”他说。

This is common. Across the Midwest, about half of all the farmland is owned by landlords who live somewhere else. Farmers compete to rent that land.

这很常见。在整个中西部，大约一半的农田归住在其他地方的房东所有。农民们竞相租用那块土地。

"There's only so much ground, and most of the farmers out there want more, so obviously it gets pretty competitive," Smith says.

史密斯说：“土地就这么多，而那里的大多数农民都想要更多的土地，所以很明显，竞争变得相当激烈。”

These farmer-landowner relationships can last for decades. They sometimes feel personal. So Smith was pretty upset when he heard that a company had sent letters to his landlords a few months ago, offering cash up front to rent the land that he's been farming.

这些农民和土地所有者的关系可以持续几十年。他们有时会觉得是私人恩怨。因此，当史密斯听说几个月前一家公司给他的土地所有者写信，表示愿意预付现金租用他一直耕种的土地时，他非常不安。

The letters came from a company called Tillable, based in Chicago. It's backed by venture capital.

这些信件来自一家名为Ttillable的公司，总部设在芝加哥。它得到了风险资本的支持。

Corbett Kull, Tillable's CEO, says that his company sent out thousands of these letters to landowners. "A lot" of them took the offer, he says. His company will take that land and list it on its website as available to rent. It'll take bids from farmers and then sublet it.

Ttillable的首席执行官科比特·库尔说，他的公司向土地所有者发出了数千封这样的信。他说，“很多人”接受了这份工作。他的公司将征用这块土地，并在其网站上列出可供出租的土地。它将接受农民的出价，然后将其转租。

American farmers spend about $32 billion each year to rent land, "This is one of the beauties of digital marketplaces, where you can bring two parties together that otherwise might never meet," he says.

美国农民每年花费约320亿美元租用土地，他说：“这是数字市场的亮点之一，在这里你可以把原本可能永远不会相遇的两个人聚集在一起。”

Those letters to landowners, though, got a lot of farmers very angry. "They're reaching out to our landlords, that we have relationships with, to sort of go behind the farmer's back" and break up those relationships, Smith says.

然而，那些写给土地所有者的信让很多农民非常愤怒。史密斯说，“他们正在联系跟我们有联系的房东，在某种程度上是背着农民”，并打破了这些关系。

Smith admits that this kind of thing does happen among farmers competing for land. But another factor played a big role in farmers' reaction. It's an unproven, very Internet-era suspicion about data and privacy.

史密斯承认这种事情确实发生在争夺土地的农民之间。但另一个因素在农民的反应中起了很大的作用。这是互联网时代对数据和隐私的一种未经证实的怀疑。

Parker Smith, like a lot of farmers, uses equipment that automatically collects all kinds of data about his operations — like how much fertilizer he applies and how much grain he harvests from each small piece of each field. He pays a company called the Climate Corporation to manage that data and help him understand it.

像许多农民一样，帕克·史密斯使用的设备可以自动收集有关他的作业的各种数据-比如他施用了多少化肥，以及他从每块田地的每一小块土地上收获了多少谷物。他付钱给一家名为“气候公司”的公司来管理这些数据，并帮助他理解这些数据。

Last fall, though, the Climate Corporation and Tillable announced a partnership. And after Smith learned about Tillable's letters to landowners, Smith had to wonder: Did Tillable target specific landlords because it got access to data about how productive and profitable their land is?

然而，去年秋天，气候公司和Ttillable宣布建立合作伙伴关系。在史密斯了解到Tililable写给土地所有者的信后，史密斯不禁要问：Tililable是否因为获得了关于他们土地的产量和利润的数据而瞄准了特定的所有者?

If someone had his data, Smith says, "they would know yields; they'd be able to roughly figure out how much money a guy was making."

史密斯说，如果有人获得他的数据，“他们就会知道收益率;他们就能粗略地计算出一个人赚了多少钱。”

Farmers on Twitter started sharing suspicions about the Tillable-Climate Corporation partnership. They accused the two companies of trafficking in farmer data.

推特上的农民们开始对Ttille和“气候公司”的合作伙伴关系表示怀疑。他们指责这两家公司贩卖农民数据。

Corbett Kull denies this. The accusations "were absolutely false," he says. "We had never accessed the data from Climate [Corporation]."

科比特·库尔否认了这一点。他说，这些指控“绝对是虚假的”。“我们从未获得过气候公司的数据。”

Yet the storm on social media forced the two companies to announce that they were cancelling their partnership.

然而社交媒体上的风暴迫使这两家公司宣布取消合作关系。