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How Agriculture Became Open Supply Hub’s Largest Dataset

As we close out a 12-month grant from The Walt Disney Company’s Supply Chain Investment Program (SCIP), which has enabled us to scale our agriculture dataset, we’ve taken a moment to reflect on all that we’ve achieved.

Why Did We Want to Grow Open Supply Hub’s Agriculture Dataset? 

The challenges of deforestation, land grabbing and child labor are particularly prevalent in agricultural supply chains. By way of example, commercial agriculture — providing raw materials for global clothing, food and beverages, furniture and packaging — is responsible for over 70% of forest destruction in tropical and subtropical countries. Likewise, this New York Times investigation exposed the scale of migrant children working in the US alone, including in agricultural supply chains. As the world grapples with the impacts of climate change, the urgency to mitigate the negative environmental impacts of current supply chain management in this sector only increases. 

But combating these issues is no simple task. Agricultural supply chains — including cotton, palm oil, coffee, soy, timber, cattle, cocoa, and rubber — impact dozens of industries around the globe but are riddled with complexities in mapping and identification at the raw material level and downstream. In addition, attempts to tackle the challenge of supply chain mapping have been fractured, piecemeal, and with no consensus around a shared data model or centralized, open repository for baseline location information. Mapping this sector has, to date, been largely dominated by commercial entities, who have siloed out datasets and prevented equitable access to all supply chain stakeholders.

In the past year, the context of agricultural supply chains has rapidly changed. Mandatory due diligence has been introduced, notably the EU Regulation on Deforestation-Free Products (EUDR). Simply put, this requires companies operating in EU markets to share the geographic coordinates of farms they source from. The geolocation coordinates will then be checked against satellite imagery for deforestation. Enforceable from 30 December 2024 for the first wave of companies, it initially affects palm oil, timber, rubber, cocoa, beef, soy, and coffee, as well as derivatives of these items — e.g.: including furniture and leather. 

As the world’s largest open database for global supply chain production locations, it’s within this context that we knew that focusing on agricultural supply chains generally, and the food and beverage sector in particular, was so important for our stakeholders. 

What Did We Achieve with Disney’s Support? 

With a grant from The Walt Disney Company’s Supply Chain Investment Program, we spent 12 months honing in on agricultural supply chains. We targeted our outreach to stakeholders engaged in agricultural supply chains. We researched and analyzed the specific nuances of agricultural data and mapping boundaries vs. static buildings that apply to OS Hub’s data model. We formed strategic partnerships. And we waded through A LOT of data— data for 128,000+ production locations to be exact. 

This is what we achieved in numbers: 

Data contributor lists from Devolt of Norway published on Open Supply Hub

Beyond these tangible results, we also learned a lot through this grant from Disney and the ability to focus heavily on one specific sector, particularly: 

Tools, initiatives & stakeholders related to due diligence legislation are growing faster than most can keep tabs on: Throughout the program, due diligence legislation—especially legislation originating from the EU including EUDR and CSDDD—has moved at a pace that means the ground is shifting under our feet on a month-to-month basis. New tools, initiatives and stakeholders are popping up all of the time. This means there is a lot of excitement, energy, and momentum. But it also means there’s a constant check for duplication of efforts and being routed to different stakeholders and programs. This tested our need to articulate clearly and succinctly what our role is in the due diligence landscape, what we are and what we are not, and how a tech stack is what’s needed, rather than any one silver bullet tech solution existing to help companies with 100% of legislative requirements. 

Stakeholders move at very different paces when it comes to transparency: We noted early on a big difference in behavior between how comfortable different stakeholders are in opening up their supply chain data. There will always be a challenge of getting first movers from certain stakeholder groups to disclose on the platform before the masses follow. We tackled this by contributing public data to the platform throughout the program. This meant that when we did speak to new stakeholders, we could show them what a relevant dataset looks like and support them to see that the benefits of transparency outweigh the often perceived risks. 

Apparel and agricultural supply chains are inextricably linked: We saw time and again throughout the program that the agriculture data that was the most forthcoming came from apparel stakeholders. This makes a lot of sense when you see how much apparel has its roots in agricultural supply chains (think about cotton and leather, for example). But we also know that the apparel sector is very comfortable with Open Supply Hub and confident in contributing new data. It’s not surprising, therefore, that M&S and Devold of Norway are two example stakeholders building out our agriculture dataset (cotton, furniture, and wool), and yet neither were our traditional or target agricultural stakeholders.

Grants like this are really valuable for a nonprofit like OS Hub…: as a non-profit organization we’re not eligible for seed funding or investment rounds like our for-profit peers and competitors. This is often how tech organizations experiment, explore and expand strategically. As a nonprofit we have to try different tactics and this grant was invaluable in giving us the same ability to test, learn, and engage with stakeholders. 

…and yet systemic change requires catalytic investment: To facilitate large and transformational changes to the platform (in terms of product and technology) and truly make an ecosystem of open data in any one sector, catalytic capital is needed to make sure OS Hub is able to keep up with the market in a way that centers collaboration, openness and transparency. The systemic change that OS Hub is driving is tied to the proud status we hold as a non-profit organization. This means that our funding model looks different and requires an alternative kind of investment to many of our peers and competitors—we raise from funders who see value in public digital goods, including organizations who proudly share our vision like The Walt Disney Company.

 

When we’re as close to the work as we are, it can be easy to forget that what we’re doing at OS Hub is actually quite revolutionary. As we near the end of another year, it is clearer than ever that we are at an inflection point with global crises and legislative attention to how supply chains contribute to them. Data is a powerful solution to drive the collaboration this moment needs and is the foundational infrastructure that the global economy requires. But we can only meet this moment with the right resources that match the scale and urgency of this challenge. 

We’re incredibly grateful for the support we received from The Walt Disney Company Supply Chain Investment Program. It transformed our ability to grow the data commons to benefit all stakeholders in supply chains. Get in touch with Natalie, Joanna or Lauren in our Business Development team—or connect with us at partnerships@opensupplyhub.org—if you’d like to learn more about supporting OS Hub.

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