Data on data: An analysis of data usage and analytics in the agricultural supply chain

The amount of data being collected throughout the agricultural supply chain has increased in both volume and velocity. All signs indicate that this will only increase as data collection technologies become more cost effective and prevalent throughout the supply chain. Previous work in this area has focused on data collection at the farm level. Our study focuses on data that originates at five different stages of the agricultural supply chain off the farm and how these stages view their firm's data collection and analysis efforts. We find that there is heterogeneity in the data collection efforts and analysis across the agricultural supply chain. Improved customer satisfaction and improved decision making were the most important benefits to data collection. We also find that the expected benefits and challenges for implementation of these efforts are not universal. Companies that exist upstream in the supply chain are more likely to disagree on intended benefits and challenges.