Ag data privacy: Now protected by law

https://northplattebulletin.com/ag-data-privacy-now-protected-by-law/

Publish Date: 2026-06-06 20:19:00

Gov. Jim Pillen, Sen. Mike Jacobson, and State Agriculture Director Sherry Vinton celebrated the enactment of a law Saturday that protects the agricultural data of individual farms and ranches.

Members of Nebraska’s agricultural industry joined the event, which was held in a farm machine shed near Gothenburg.

The bill, LB 525, establishes clear rules for the collection, processing and use of agricultural data in a way that best protects the privacy of farmers and ranchers who own the data.

Jacobson initially introduced the bill in 2025 on behalf of Pillen and it was passed this year.

Nebraska is the first state in the nation to enact specific digital privacy safeguards, Jacobson said.

“LB 525 represents critical, forward-thinking policy when it comes to preserving the future of our family farms,” Pillen said. Again, Nebraska is setting the standard – one that will add value and protect our state’s key economic engine — agriculture.”

During the past 30 years, agricultural production has been significantly transformed through advances in technology. Farmers rely on automated, GPS-guided steering in tractors, sprayers and combines, computerized seeding rate systems, variable-rate chemigation and irrigation technology, and real-time yield data captured during harvest.

Every season, such information is collected. Farmers and producers can capitalize on it, if it’s properly protected, Pillen said.

Jacobson noted that “Agriculture is Nebraska’s largest industry, and modern operations generate significant amounts of proprietary digital data that our producers rely on.”

He said he “was proud to partner with Gov. Pillen to pass LB 525 to establish clear legal protections for this valuable operational data, explicitly prohibiting its unauthorized sale and requiring reasonable security standards.”

“As the first state in the…

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