There are ways to collect information on the farm that can help a farmer become more efficient, but there is also a danger that information — some of it just as sensitive as banking information — could fall into the wrong hands.

"Data … is a valuable commodity. Whether you’re raising soybeans or raising corn, you’re spinning off all sorts of information; it’s a byproduct of every single thing you do," Billy Tiller, business development director of Grower Information Services Cooperative (GISC) and a Texas farmer, told an audience at the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation...