Food production is a complex process involving the monitoring of raw materials, supply chains, market prices and much more besides. Access to smart data can help producers make their processes both greener and more cost effective, and also be used to create additional revenue streams.
Food producers who have reliable answers to various questions can anticipate future demand and plan their production capacity more precisely. This can mean, for example, controlling production volumes so that they avoid overproduction at certain times of the year. A research consortium led by Wolfgang Maaß, Professor of Business Informatics at Saarland University, is showing how smart data can be used by food producers to yield reliable business forecasts.
“Food production generates vast amounts of data, much of which has so far gone unused. That data represents unemployed capital. Using our data platform we can identify and establish relationships between production data sets. Once these data sets have been linked, analysed and evaluated, they can provide concrete recommendations for action whenever key production decisions need to be made,” explains Wolfgang Maaß.
One third of global greenhouse gas emissions is generated by food production, whilst millions of tons of food are destroyed every year. This is damaging to the climate and results in higher costs.
By establishing a data marketplace, Maaß and his research team want to use this new level of data transparency to promote sustainable practices and create additional revenue streams for producers and manufacturers. Electronic contracts provide legal security in terms of precisely what and how data can be used, so that the data owned by each producer is safeguarded from misuse and from being used or transmitted inadvertently.
“We want to help food data acquire its own intrinsic value and to make it into a tradable commodity,” explains Professor Maaß. Companies that make their data available to the Evarest platform can not only transform production data into an additional source of revenue, they can also help build a system that benefits all stakeholders.
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