Outrage about new conditions for JoinData

The organization, which has a virtual monopoly, has been asked to respond and says it is considering a response. Uniform-Agri, which develops management programs for livestock farming and has several thousand dairy farmers as customers, does not find JoinData's new conditions acceptable.

Unacceptable
Director Harm-Jan van der Beek has informed customers about the state of affairs and reports that he will no longer purchase data from JoinData for the time being. "The rates charged for next year are one bump. Until now the service has been free. For next year we have to pay €20 per customer, while the farmers themselves already pay €50 per company to JoinData. If Accounting firms want the dairy data, they have to pay at least the same as us, and so does the feed industry."

Not small beer
At first glance it all seems like small beer, says Van der Beek, but it isn't, he calculates. "Suppose you have a group of 2.000 livestock farmers. They together pay €100.000 per year. A customer like us would have to pay around €40.000. If you add the same amount for an accountant and a feed company, then you are at least € 220.000 per year in extra costs for something that ran well and hardly cost any money. We have to adjust the software beyond that."

General terms and conditions
However, there is more, and something that is actually even more difficult to accept. In the English general terms and conditions of JoinData (viewed by Boerenbusiness) the office in Wageningen is actually completely ignorant in the field of liability, while the fines for data leaks, for example, can be enormous.

The question of course is whether this is legally possible, being a reseller of data, but not taking liability, Uniform believes. Livestock farmers are also not happy with the state of affairs. On X (formerly Twitter), several farmers express their dissatisfaction with JoinData's position. Many farmers already feel that they have no choice because they are forced to give up their data through the delivery conditions, but they like it even less that they have to pay for it themselves and have little or no say in the matter. what happens next with their data.

A question that is closely linked to the possible liability of JoinData is the lack of clarity about ownership, farmers argue. JoinData is formally a cooperative of various organizations in the agricultural sector. The board also includes various (former) directors and managers from the cooperative sector (Rabobank, accountants, dairy cooperatives and livestock improvement), but it is not clear from public documents who owns the shares. This is important in any procedures.

In recent times, farmers and some of their organizations have also complained to the ACM about the state of affairs at JoinData, but no decision has yet been reached.