Data ownership and data use
Plain answers for farmers, banks and insurers: who owns the data in FairGrow, who can see it, and what happens when a farm shares it with a financial institution.
Field data belongs to the farm. Nobody else sees it unless the farm says so.
FairGrow does not sell data and does not pass it to third parties for commercial purposes, not anonymised and not aggregated. A bank or insurer sees only what the farm has explicitly allowed, and the farm can withdraw that permission at any time.
Who owns the data
We separate the farm’s own data from the open data that FairGrow brings in.
| Data | Where it comes from | Who owns it |
|---|---|---|
| Sensor readings (soil moisture, soil and air temperature, humidity and more) | The farm’s own sensors | The farm |
| Plot boundaries, crops and plantings | Entered or drawn by the farm | The farm |
| Crop records (jobs, spray register, harvests, logbooks) | Entered by the farm | The farm |
| Satellite imagery (Sentinel-2) | Copernicus, the open Earth observation programme of the European Union | Open data. The results FairGrow calculates for the farm’s plots are part of the farm’s records |
| Weather forecasts and weather history | Open weather models and archives | Open data. The results calculated for the farm’s plots are part of the farm’s records |
FairGrow processes the open data on its own servers. To fetch the weather or a satellite image for a plot, FairGrow sends the open data service only the coordinates of the location or the outline of the plot, without a name or any account details.
Who can see the data
Access is granted by the farm, not by FairGrow.
The farm decides
Only accounts the farm grants access to can see its data. Access is granted per device, with one of three roles: viewer, editor or administrator. Share codes work once, can expire and can be revoked at any time.
The farm’s own team
The owner of a farm can invite team members by e-mail. They work with the farm’s data under the rights the owner gives them.
EasyData staff
Only for support and operations. Our systems can be reached only by staff who have signed our internal IT code of conduct, under the controls of our ISO 27001 certification.
The AI assistant
If a user asks the assistant a question, sends a plant photo or switches on the plain-language summary in the weekly report, that question, that photo or the figures for that week go to Anthropic, a US AI provider, to produce the answer. We use it temporarily, until our own AI technology is ready. It is not used to train AI models. All other sensor data, plots and crop records stay on our servers.
Sharing data with a bank or insurer
Only with the farm’s explicit consent, per type of data, and revocable at any time. The connection runs through the FairGrow Partner API.
A connection, not a password
The bank or insurer gets its own partner access. The farm never hands over its password.
The farm chooses
In FairGrow, the owner of the farm ticks which types of data the institution may read, for example plots, satellite indices and alerts, but not sales or costs. Only the owner can grant or withdraw consent.
Only what is allowed
Every request is checked against the consent for that farm, that institution and that type of data. Without consent, the institution gets nothing back.
Revoke in one click
Under Connections (API) in the crop records, the farm sees every partner, its permissions and how often it called in the last seven days. After revoking, access stops at once and the institution receives a notification.
| Permission | What the bank or insurer sees |
|---|---|
fields:read | Plots, their boundaries and what is planted |
satellite:read | Vegetation index statistics per plot, such as NDVI |
sensors:read | Sensors linked to plots, and their readings |
alerts:read | Risk signals and alerts, such as frost, water stress and crop disease |
farms:read | The farm and its members, without e-mail addresses |
jobs:read, harvests:read | Jobs, the spray register, harvests and lots |
Not included unless the farm ticks it separately: sales, costs and margins, time entries, stock and the e-mail addresses of members. An institution never sees passwords, and never sees a farm that has not given consent.
Audit log. Every call to the Partner API is logged. The farm sees in its own account which partner has access, with which permissions, and how often it called in the last seven days. The call log is kept for seven days.
Copies already received. Data that a bank or insurer has already retrieved sits in that institution’s own systems, and FairGrow cannot delete it there. What the institution may do with it, and for how long it may keep it, is set by the agreement between the farm and the institution and by the institution’s own data protection obligations. Revoking consent stops any new access immediately.
Where the data is stored, and under which law
All data is stored and processed on our own servers in a Dutch data centre. The one exception is the AI features (Ask FairGrow, the plant scan and the plain-language summary in the weekly report): see article 6 of our data agreement. We do not depend on US cloud services for storing growing data. The data falls under EU law, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This also applies to farms in Armenia: their data is stored in the Netherlands, not in Armenia.
EasyData is ISO 27001 certified (certificate NL/1543IS/1618), and the certification is audited externally every year. We make daily backups. When we process personal data on behalf of a client, a data processing agreement applies.
The farm can take its data with it, or have it deleted
Sensor readings can be exported as CSV, and the spray register as CSV, XLSX or JSON. When an agreement ends, the farm gets an agreed period to export its measurements and reference data before the environment is wiped.
Under the GDPR, the farm can ask for access to its data, correction, export or deletion by writing to welkom@easydata.nl. Backups follow the timeline agreed for them. A deletion in FairGrow does not reach copies that a bank or insurer has already received; see the section above.
How long data is kept
| Data | How long it is kept |
|---|---|
| Farm data (readings, plots, crop records) | As long as the account is active. After the agreement ends: the agreed export period, then deletion |
| Daily backups | For the period set in the agreement, then deleted |
| Partner API call log | Seven days |
| Website visitor log | Three months |
| Invoices and payment records | Seven years, the statutory period under Dutch law |
Where our privacy policy or an agreement sets a specific period, that period applies. The export period after an agreement ends and the backup retention period are laid down in the agreement with the client (the SLA or the data processing agreement).
Legal entities and contact
FairGrow is a trade name of EasyData. EasyData operates through two legal entities:
- EasyData B.V., Koninginnelaan 16, 7315 BS Apeldoorn, the Netherlands. Chamber of Commerce number 08083557. Founded in 1999.
- EasyData LLC, Yerevan, Armenia. EasyData has been in Yerevan since 2022.
For questions from financial institutions and for general questions: welkom@easydata.nl or +31 (0)55 534 4886.
The binding text. This page explains how things work in practice. The legally binding texts are our privacy policy, our terms of service and, for business clients, the service level agreement and the data processing agreement. Where this page and those texts differ, those texts apply. See also who owns your sensor data, how partner connections work and our legal notice.
Last updated: 2 October 2026.
Questions from banks and insurers
Can a bank see data from a farm that has not given consent?
No. Without consent, the Partner API returns nothing about that farm.
What happens if a farm withdraws consent during a loan?
FairGrow stops access immediately and notifies the bank. If a loan agreement obliges the farm to share data, that is a matter between the farm and the bank.
Does FairGrow sell data to banks, or pass it on by itself?
No. A bank only receives data through a connection the farm has approved.
Where is the data of farms in Armenia stored?
On our own servers in a Dutch data centre, under the GDPR.
Questions as a bank or insurer?
Write to us and we will explain how a connection works for your institution.