I’m happy to announce the formation of a new project I’ll be leading, the Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability (CFDAS). The effort has been underway for a while and is made possible by the Purdue Next Moves initiative, in which the University invested in two initiatives, Plant Science 2.0 and the Digital Innovation in Agri-Food Systems Laboratory (DIAL), both of which house the CFDAS.
The purpose of the CFDAS is to create, interpret, and communicate data about consumer preferences and food markets to help consumers, farmers, agribusinesses, and policy makers improve the food system by making more informed decisions.
The investment in the food and food system space is motivated by several factors:
For every $1 of farm production, consumers spend about $6 food. Thus, there are immense opportunities to add value by better tailoring farm production to consumer demands.
U.S. consumer incomes have risen over time, and today only 8.6% of disposable incomes are spent on food. Thus, U.S. consumers can afford to demand new attributes from the food system.
Digital agriculture, coupled with machine learning, AI, and blockchain, are creating the ability for vast amounts of information to be transmitted across the food supply chain. Thus, changes in consumer demand and pressures to adopt sustainability metrics will more quickly and profoundly impact food processing and farming in the future.
The ability to design, produce, and deliver crops with specific attributes for specific consumer segments is emerging at a fast pace. Thus, understanding which attributes are most important to consumers and how purchase behavior will be influenced by information is critical for success.
Existing sources of data about consumer demand and food markets are often released with significant delays, in arcane formats, and without context for actionable decisions. Thus, there is an opportunity to create a hub for timely, accessible data and insights about consumer demand, food markets, and sustainability.
CFDAS will create and disseminate information in four primary categories:
Food Prices
Food Production and Supply
Consumer Food Spending
Consumer Preferences, Attitudes, Knowledge, and Beliefs.
Data in each category will come from 1) existing public sources that are often in formats that are not easily digestible by the general public or media, 2) data that will be created by CFDAS – most notably by the launch of a new monthly consumer tracking survey, and 3) data that will be acquired through purchase or partnership with outside entities. These data will be used to create dynamic, auto-updating web dashboards which will be hosted on the CFDAS web page. These custom dashboards will be complemented with monthly reports disseminating information from the consumer tracking survey and social-media listening efforts. The CFDAS will serve as a resource for sister initiatives in Purdue Plant Sciences 2.0 and the Digital Innovation in Agri-Food Systems Laboratory (DIAL), as well as for external industry partners, and will provide periodic research reports summarizing data collection and analysis commissioned by these groups.
I’ve staffed up the Center and work is now underway. Have ideas or suggestions for us? I’d love to hear them.