Farm Identity: Who is the farm & why it matters - A model for New Zealand
Trust Alliance New Zealand and Backstory
Agriculture has become increasingly digital. We identify people, companies, land parcels, consents, livestock, bank customers, processor suppliers and farm-management accounts. But there is a more fundamental question: How do we consistently identify the farm enterprise itself?
TANZis pleased to announce in association with Backstory the first in a new series of four workshops exploring the infrastructure required for a trusted, AI-enabled agricultural economy.
Workshop 1 — Farm Identity: Who is the farm and why it matters - A model for New Zealand?
In this 45-minute session, we will explore why a persistent digital identity for the Operational Farm Enterprise matters — and what becomes possible once we have one.
We will look at:
why existing person, company, property and supplier identifiers don't necessarily identify the operational farm;
the concept of a sovereign Farm Register and how farm identity can be established without centralising all farm data;
how people, organisations, land, activities and authority can be connected to an identified Farm Enterprise;
how New Zealand's Digital Identity Services Trust Framework provides a foundation for trusted digital identity and binding arrangements;
how FarmID is being aligned with international standards for metadata and identity management;
how farmers can retain control over who is authorised to access or act on behalf of their enterprise; and
why trusted farm identity could become an important foundation for AI agents and farmer-controlled API/MCP integration.
It's a discussion about the trust infrastructure agriculture may need as AI becomes capable not only of providing information, but of interacting with systems and eventually undertaking authorised actions on behalf of an enterprise.
This is the first of four TANZ workshops, moving progressively from Farm Identity → Farm Intelligence → Agentic AI → Agricultural Opportunity.