2016 ICT4D Conference

It is widely recognized that collaboration is the key to addressing challenges of sustainable development. It is also well understood that collaboration will be driven by data sharing, information exchange and better communication across the value-chain. However, achieving this goal has proven challenging and raises several questions
- What is the tangible business case for collaborating with my competitors?
- How can we share data in a manner that is universally comparable and useful?
- How can we reduce the competitive risks of sharing internal company data openly?
This presentation looks to the agriculture sector for ideas and examples of better collaboration and data sharing across the value chain.
UTZ is a not-for-profit organization working towards a world where sustainable farming is the norm. We are the largest program for sustainable coffee and cocoa worldwide with product labels on over 20000 products across 135 countries. UTZ sets a "code of conduct" for how coffee and cocoa must be produced and handled through the supply chain. In 2014, nearly 600,000 smallholder farms produced coffee and cocoa using the UTZ code, which provides a huge base for farm level data. Our experience shows that this data can act as a starting point for fostering collaboration and address questions raised above.
This presentation will look at how technology enables collecting data from farms in a usable form. We will explore specific use cases where sharing data across thousands of farms and supply chains creates incremental value. Finally, we will also look at how a sustainability standard like UTZ provides a natural starting point to collect data that can be easily compared on an apples-to-apples basis and in a pre-competitive, open manner.