Simplifying digital tools for farmers, small food businesses
Project investigates market opportunity for a common data standard
By Lilian Schaer
The adoption of e-commerce and other digital tools by farmers and small food companies skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic as businesses searched to find new ways to reach their customers.
A fragmented digital marketplace, however, means they’re using a variety of different platforms to sell their products online – platforms that can’t interact or connect with each other, making it difficult for buyers like food hubs, for example, to navigate buying directly from farms and local food businesses on a larger scale.
The solution, believes David Thomas with Open Food Network Canada, lies in the Data Food Consortium (DFC) open standard, a common data standard that would let the different e-commerce platforms communicate with each other simply and easily.
“The software that we provide essentially allows for the creation of multi-vendor online marketplaces and regional selling networks to make it easier for local food platforms to share information across different digital tools,” Thomas explains. “More broadly, we are a social purpose organization and what we’re interested in fundamentally is supporting the development of short local agri-food supply chains.”
Working in France and the UK, Thomas’ organization Open Food Network has spearheaded the development of an open standard system – the DFC open standard – that he says provides “Hootsuite-style functionality”, referencing a popular application that lets social media managers update and manage all their social media channels on a single dashboard, that would keep food suppliers from having to manually manage their inventory across different platforms.
“For this to become a standard in North America, it must be adopted by other platforms in this space,” he says, pointing to successes this model has had in France and the UK where data consortia have brought players and platforms together.
To determine the feasibility of such an approach in Canada, Thomas received funding from the Ontario Agri-Food Research Initiative (OAFRI) administered by Bioenterprise Canada to support market validation research in Ontario.
The first half of the project involved talking to local food stakeholders like farmers, farmers’ markets, and food hub coordinators to learn more about their digital tool experiences and challenges. The second half included reaching out to online food marketplaces like Local Line and Local Food Marketplace, farm management platforms and logistics providers to gauge their interest in the concept of a common, open standard.
“We received strong feedback from Ontario stakeholders that they like digital tools but are having significant issues with interoperability, especially those who want to sell on multiple platforms,” Thomas says. “We also had positive response from industry that a common standard would solve these issues and unlock new functionality features and opportunities for growth – but that they have questions around data management and governance.”
The project was able to validate a need to develop and adopt standards, but the next stage of the initiative is decidedly more complex, he adds. Open Food Network Canada is a non-profit, which makes it a natural choice to lead this conversation, but driving adoption of the standard and ensuring industry engagement will likely require financial support from governments and investors to make it happen.
In the short-term, his team is working to integrate his platform with an open source farm management tool called LiteFarm to demonstrate the kind of functionality that the DFC open standard can unlock.
The OAFRI funding was critical in helping engage stakeholders and materials, he notes, and he’s now exploring the services of the one-year membership in Bioenterprise, Canada’s Food & Agri-Tech Engine, that he received along with the project funding.
“We are grateful for the opportunity to participate and explore the connections Bioenterprise can provide to help further develop the projects,” he says.
The Ontario Agri-Food Research Initiative was funded through the Canadian Agricultural Partnership (the Partnership), a five-year, $3 billion investment by federal, provincial and territorial governments from 2018-2023, to strengthen the agriculture, agri‐food and agri‐based products sector, ensuring continued innovation, growth and prosperity. The views expressed are the views of the recipient and do not necessarily reflect those of the governments of Canada or Ontario.
-30-
Not yet following us on social media? Follow Bioenterprise Canada on Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok, and subscribe to our YouTube channel for industry news, events, and business development opportunities.