Data-Gold at the End of the Sustainable Food Production Rainbow?

Abstract

An important way for the agrifood industry to continue to feed a growing world population as well as reduce its environmental impact is to extensively adopt Information Technologies that will “datafy” the industry. While the promises of datafication are high, the realization is lagging behind. We identify and discuss from an institutional economics point of view three related issues that help explain needs run behind realization: supply of data is separated from use of data; data quality, interoperability and standardization; and data completeness.