Some Solutions Require Data Transparency

This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with your Farm of the Future Report.

There’s no shortage of data in agriculture, but how much of that data is actually transparent enough to solve industry-wide issues? Jeff Schreiner, senior vice president of global collaboration at Cultura Tech says one of the biggest problems he hears from customers in the agri-food system is the lack of data-sharing, which ultimately keeps really problems from getting solved.

Schreiner... "If you can share data, you can one, report on the data for compliance purposes or other purposes, or a board's initiative has decided that they, they really want to hear an answer about a certain topic. And once I have the data from my partners, as well as me, I now have a much better avenue to do that. And two, when someone says optimization, I mean, we have a world of optimization examples out there. We produce product that's not being used and thrown away. We move product, you know, two or three ways that may not be the most efficient way to get it to the right consumer. We're maybe making instinctual decisions around. Where are the markets, you know, where the flow of goods are going to. And I think that optimization, which is let's look at that as a holistic picture and let's say, can we optimize, can we take less steps out of the process, can we use the data that people are willing to share to get to the right outcomes, I think is a really, really good premise."

Schreiner believes there is lots of opportunity to use the approach of other industries as a model for agriculture.