Expert insights

Greater transparency allows consumers to make more informed buying decisions

Better data management

INTERVIEW WITH

RALF ONKEN

Ralf Onken, Head of Software Development at Benchmark, explains the power of data to drive and demonstrate progress in the food chain. Ralf’s most recent project involves working with producers to manage key performance and sustainability metrics with the aim of creating more transparency and accountability in the shrimp farming sector.

How did you first get involved with data management?

I began my career writing software in the human healthcare industry to measure pain and infections and recognised the value that this created in assessing progress of treatment plans for patients.

I moved into the food production industry five years ago, where I started to work with major forward-thinking food producers to standardise their data capture and results for their key production measurements.

What are the key opportunities and benefits of using data tools in the food chain?

I believe data tools can serve two related goals: increase transparency and trust across the food chain, and help producers drive improvements on their farms.

Producers often use manual data sheets to record information for their farms by countries and regions. This means that information is often not stored in a single area where the data can be analysed and put to use easily. This presents a major opportunity for us to help standardise, record, analyse, and share data in a way that will both drive well-informed action, create best practice and generate transparency and trust between different actors in the food chain.

I like to think that data provides a platform for more proactive thinking. By introducing data management tools to a food production system we remove the guess work out of farming, it becomes much more predictable over time and farmers can follow their data in ‘real time’ and act quickly.

Data offers the opportunity for producers, retailers and regulators to compare themselves to others, and to stand up and present evidence-based statements and stories about their results and outcomes, thus increasing transparency. Data and technology are empowering in this way, giving producers a level of control that they may not have had previously.