Last updated: January 1, 2025
CropKern, Inc. ("CropKern," "we," "us," or "our") operates a precision agriculture software platform accessible at cropkernx.com and related mobile applications. This Privacy Policy describes how CropKern collects, uses, stores, shares, and protects information about you and your agricultural operations when you access or use our services. It also describes your rights with respect to that information and how you can contact us with questions or requests.
By creating an account, accessing the CropKern platform, uploading parcel data, or connecting sensor devices to our system, you acknowledge that you have read and understood this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with the terms of this policy, please do not access or use our services. This policy applies to all users of the CropKern platform regardless of how they access it - through the web application, mobile applications, or API integrations.
CropKern's principal place of business is at 6200 Park Ave, Des Moines, IA 50321, United States. For privacy-related inquiries, you may contact us at team@cropkernx.com or by mail at the above address, attention: Privacy Team.
We collect information in several categories depending on how you interact with our platform:
When you register for a CropKern account, we collect your full name, business or organization name, email address, phone number, mailing address, and the state or country where your farming operation is located. We also collect billing information (credit card or payment account details, billing address) processed through our payment processor, Stripe, Inc. We do not store complete payment card numbers on our own servers. We collect the username and password you create for your account, and we store passwords in hashed form using industry-standard cryptographic algorithms.
CropKern's core service requires you to upload or create records describing your agricultural operations. This includes parcel boundary files (GeoJSON, shapefiles, or KML) defining the geographic extent of your fields; parcel metadata including parcel name, crop type, hybrid or variety, planting date, seeding population, and irrigation system type; soil sampling data, soil physical property estimates, and soil series designations; historical yield maps from precision agriculture yield monitors; irrigation application records including volumes, dates, and system settings; crop scouting notes, anomaly observations, and management records you enter through the mobile application; and sensor configuration data including SDI-12 sensor device addresses, installation depths, and calibration parameters.
This agricultural data is treated as confidential business information under our Terms of Service. We do not sell individual farm-level data to third parties. We may use aggregated, de-identified statistics derived from the CropKern user population for internal research and product development purposes, subject to the conditions described in Section 4 below.
When you connect soil moisture sensors, weather stations, or other IoT devices to CropKern, we receive and store the telemetry data transmitted by those devices. This includes soil moisture readings at each depth, soil temperature, air temperature and humidity, rainfall, and any other sensor outputs transmitted over your configured communication protocol (LoRaWAN, cellular, or direct API). We also store device metadata including device identifiers, firmware versions, gateway addresses, and communication logs. Device connectivity events (connection, disconnection, packet delivery failures) are logged to support diagnostics and quality assurance.
CropKern ingests satellite imagery from the European Space Agency's Copernicus Sentinel-2 program (publicly available) and, where applicable, from commercial providers including Planet Labs, Inc., under license agreements that prohibit redistribution of raw imagery. We compute and store derived products from this imagery - vegetation indices, evapotranspiration estimates, leaf area index values, and anomaly flags - at the parcel level and associate them with your account. We do not acquire imagery that is not needed to service your registered parcels.
We collect information about how you use the CropKern platform, including pages visited, features accessed, report downloads, API call volumes and endpoints, and error events. We collect your device's IP address, browser type and version, operating system, screen resolution, and referring URL when you access the platform through a web browser. We use session cookies and authentication tokens to maintain your logged-in session. We use analytics cookies to understand aggregate usage patterns. Details about our cookie usage are described in our Cookie Policy at legal/cookies.html.
CropKern uses the information we collect for the following purposes:
We use your account information, agricultural data, sensor data, and satellite-derived data to deliver the CropKern platform's core functions: parcel monitoring, yield forecasting, irrigation scheduling recommendations, stress alert generation, and reporting. Without your parcel data and sensor data, we cannot provide these services. We use your payment information to process subscription charges and issue receipts. We use your contact information to send service notifications, scheduled report deliveries, and support communications.
We use aggregated, de-identified data derived from the CropKern user population to improve our yield forecasting models, irrigation scheduling algorithms, and anomaly detection systems. De-identification means that the data cannot reasonably be used to identify you or your specific farm operation. We conduct this research with internal staff and may engage academic or research institution collaborators under data use agreements that include confidentiality obligations and prohibit re-identification. We will not use your identifiable agricultural data for research that could benefit a competitor or that would put your operation at commercial disadvantage.
We may use or disclose your information when required to do so by applicable law, regulation, court order, or valid legal process. We may also use your information to enforce our Terms of Service, investigate potential violations, prevent fraud, and protect the rights, property, or safety of CropKern, our users, and the public.
We use your email address and phone number to send you transactional communications related to your account (account confirmation, password reset, billing receipts), service alerts (sensor connectivity issues, upcoming scheduled maintenance), and, if you have opted in, product updates and educational content about precision agriculture topics. You can opt out of non-transactional communications at any time through the notification settings in your account or by clicking the unsubscribe link in any marketing email.
CropKern does not sell your personal information or your farm-level agricultural data to third parties. We share information in the following limited circumstances:
We engage third-party service providers who process data on our behalf to deliver the CropKern service. These providers are contractually required to process data only as directed by CropKern and to maintain appropriate security measures. Current categories of service providers include: cloud infrastructure and hosting (Amazon Web Services, Inc.); payment processing (Stripe, Inc.); email delivery services for transactional and notification emails; customer support ticketing systems; and error monitoring and application performance monitoring services. We provide these providers with only the minimum information necessary for the specific service they perform.
To retrieve satellite imagery and weather station data for your registered parcels, we must share parcel boundary coordinates with our data providers. The geographic coordinates of your field boundaries are shared with providers including Planet Labs, Inc. (where Planet imagery is requested) and weather data API providers. These providers receive only the coordinates necessary to retrieve the requested imagery or data and are not authorized to use those coordinates for any other purpose under our data use agreements.
If CropKern undergoes a merger, acquisition, or sale of all or substantially all of its assets, your information may be transferred to the acquiring entity as part of that transaction. We will notify you via email and/or a prominent notice on our platform prior to any such transfer and will describe any choices you may have with respect to your information. Any successor entity will be required to honor the commitments made in this Privacy Policy.
We may disclose your information in response to a valid court order, subpoena, government investigation, or other legally binding request. Where permitted by law, we will attempt to notify you before complying with such a request unless we are legally prohibited from doing so. We will disclose the minimum information necessary to comply with the legal obligation.
We retain your account information and agricultural data for the duration of your active subscription and for a period of 36 months following the termination or expiration of your account. During the post-termination retention period, your data is not accessible through the platform but is preserved to allow account reactivation and to comply with applicable legal obligations. You may request earlier deletion of your account and associated data by contacting team@cropkernx.com. Upon receipt of a deletion request, we will complete the deletion within 30 business days, subject to legal hold obligations that may require us to retain certain records.
Sensor telemetry data (raw sensor readings) is retained at full resolution for 24 months and at daily summary resolution for 5 years. Satellite-derived index values are retained at parcel resolution for 5 years. Yield forecast history is retained indefinitely as long as your account is active. Billing records are retained for 7 years from the transaction date in accordance with U.S. financial record-keeping obligations. Usage logs and API access logs are retained for 12 months.
Depending on your location, you may have the following rights with respect to your personal information:
You have the right to request a copy of the personal information we hold about you and, where technically feasible, to receive it in a structured, machine-readable format. You can access much of your agricultural data directly through the CropKern platform's export functions (GeoJSON parcel export, CSV sensor data download, PDF report generation). For a comprehensive data export, contact team@cropkernx.com with the subject line "Data Access Request."
You have the right to request that we correct inaccurate personal information we hold about you. Account information can be updated directly in your profile settings. For corrections to records you cannot update directly, contact team@cropkernx.com.
You have the right to request deletion of your personal information and agricultural data, subject to our retention obligations described in Section 5. Requests should be submitted to team@cropkernx.com with the subject line "Data Deletion Request."
You have the right to object to our use of your personal information for research or aggregation purposes, or to request that we restrict processing of your information to specific purposes. Contact team@cropkernx.com to submit such a request.
If you are located in the European Union or European Economic Area, you have additional rights under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), including the right to lodge a complaint with your national data protection authority. CropKern's legal basis for processing your personal data for service delivery is the performance of a contract. Our legal basis for using your data for platform improvement is our legitimate interest in improving the service, balanced against your right to privacy. Our legal basis for processing your data for legal compliance is legal obligation. Where we rely on consent (such as for marketing communications), you have the right to withdraw consent at any time without affecting the lawfulness of processing based on consent before withdrawal.
If you are a California resident, you have additional rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and its successor, the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), including the right to know what categories of personal information we collect and how we use it, the right to delete, the right to opt out of the sale of personal information (we do not sell personal information), and the right to non-discrimination for exercising your privacy rights. To exercise your CCPA/CPRA rights, contact team@cropkernx.com.
CropKern employs administrative, technical, and physical security measures to protect your information against unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction. Technical measures include: TLS/HTTPS encryption for all data in transit; AES-256 encryption for data at rest in our database and object storage systems; role-based access controls limiting employee access to customer data to those with a business need; multi-factor authentication required for all CropKern employee access to production systems; regular third-party penetration testing and vulnerability scanning; and automated alerting for anomalous access patterns. Despite these measures, no security system is impenetrable. We cannot guarantee the security of information transmitted over the internet or stored in our systems.
If we become aware of a security breach that has resulted in unauthorized access to your personal information, we will notify you by email within 72 hours of becoming aware of the breach, where required by applicable law. Our notification will describe the nature of the breach, the categories of data involved, and the steps we are taking to address it.
CropKern uses cookies and similar tracking technologies on our web platform. Cookies are small text files stored in your browser that help us recognize you between visits, maintain your session, remember your preferences, and understand how you use our platform. For detailed information about the specific cookies we use, their purposes, and how to manage your cookie preferences, please review our Cookie Policy at legal/cookies.html.
CropKern's platform is designed for commercial agricultural operations and is not directed to individuals under the age of 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 18. If we learn that we have inadvertently collected personal information from a child under 18, we will take steps to delete that information promptly. If you believe a child under 18 has provided us with personal information, please contact us at team@cropkernx.com.
CropKern is headquartered in the United States and primarily processes data on infrastructure located in the United States (Amazon Web Services US-East and US-West regions). If you are located outside the United States, your use of the CropKern platform involves the transfer of your personal information to the United States. Data protection laws in the United States may differ from those in your country. By using CropKern, you consent to the transfer of your information to the United States for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy.
The CropKern platform may contain links to third-party websites or services, including weather data providers, government agricultural databases, and extension resources. CropKern is not responsible for the privacy practices of these third-party sites. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any third-party sites you visit through links from our platform.
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices, legal requirements, or service features. When we make material changes, we will notify you by email to the address associated with your account and by posting a prominent notice on the CropKern platform for at least 30 days before the changes take effect. The date at the top of this policy ("Last updated") reflects the most recent revision. Your continued use of CropKern after the effective date of any changes constitutes your acceptance of the updated policy.
For privacy-related questions, requests, or complaints, please contact CropKern at:
CropKern, Inc.
6200 Park Ave
Des Moines, IA 50321
United States
Email: team@cropkernx.com
Phone: +1 (515) 847-3296
We aim to respond to all privacy-related inquiries within 10 business days. For formal data subject rights requests under GDPR or CCPA, we will acknowledge receipt within 5 business days and complete the request within the legally required timeframe (typically 30 days, with extensions where permitted by law).