The rise of data in agricultural markets

 The rise of data in agricultural markets

Technology is reshaping agricultural commodities, in the fields and around the world

By Steven Stasys, CME Group

May 2, 2025

At a Glance:

• As technology and data collection practices continue to evolve, agricultural commodities are becoming more specialized.
• Rising consumer demand for organic and identity-preserved crops is reemphasizing the importance of traceability.

When Matt Bennett, a seventh-generation grain farmer based in Shelby County, Illinois, plants his crops in the spring, he can download data from his tractor to precisely track the type of hybrids he’s sown in his fields, where they’re located and how far apart they are spaced, tailored to the soil type. 

As the crops grow, he uses weather apps to measure rainfall without having to drive to the fields and measure moisture. He layers thermal imaging maps with yield maps to fine-tune what production might look like in the growing season. After harvest he will update his yield maps and overlay those with fertilizer maps. Working with his seed dealer, they can decide for the following year what to plant, where to plant it and the best type of seed to use. 

“These tools have helped us to maximize efficiency,” Bennett says.

Not only is that data useful for Bennett to grow crops now, in the future he might be able to use that data as another valuable commodity. As technology advances and the ability to collect and store data grows, commodity production has become more granular. 

Technology has allowed farmers, traders and end users to get market intelligence in a digital fashion to make smarter, more efficient decisions tailored to the supply and demand of the market. The industry can use data to verify where crops were grown and if they’ve adhered to certain growing practices with specific attributes, which may allow them to command a premium.

Following the trends

Rising demand for organic and identity-preserved crops inspired Kellee James, founder and CEO of Mercaris, now Argus AgriMarkets Organic, to create a market information service for these niche crops. Prices for crops such as organic corn or non-genetically modified soybeans don’t always follow the larger pricing trends in the commodities markets. 

The divergent pricing trend represented risk for the industry. “We saw a gap in the marketplace,” she says, and thought at the time, “let’s get in there and help people along the whole supply chain to understand those markets, supply, demand and prices.”

Working with producers, merchandisers and others in the physical commodity industry, a dozen years ago she created an online dashboard of news, insight and data, plus prices and trends dedicated to those in the identity-preserved sector to help them make more informed decisions.

Jeff Schreiner, SVP of Global Collaboration at Cultura Technologies, a growing global collaborative of Agri-Food focused technology businesses, says the ability to collect more data and network that information together means data can enhance the value of a commodity and may become a product itself.

For example, he says, traceability has always been important to agriculture, and with new technologies that allow geolocating of products, this enables end users to follow not only where a commodity came from, but how it was treated along the way. Rather than being reactive, this allows producers to be proactive to prevent issues downstream that can be valuable to consumers, especially in the organic or sustainable industries.

“If our industry comes together to link production and the values that the consumer really wants with the value chain – and be able to prove it – that’s a completely new, proactive marketplace that doesn’t exist today,”

– Jeff Schreiner, SVP of Global Collaboration at Cultura Technologies

Another example is the rising interest in how to value carbon. Farmers who raise crops for biofuels, and can measure the carbon intensity of how they treat and grow the crops, can not only sell their crops to an ethanol plant, but potentially receive additional financial value for their methods, Schreiner says.

Challenges in tech adoption

Technology is also bringing transparency to Brazil’s commodity sector. Grao Direto is an online marketplace for pricing physical grains that bring buyers and sellers together. Fred Marques, chief technology officer at Grao Direto, says the platform gives farmers and grain companies greater market intelligence by posting prices from 13,000 locations across the country, and does away with the phone-based negotiations between a single buyer and seller, which was common in Brazil.

Still, technology can intimidate. To counteract that, Marques says they talk to those grain brokers and explain how digitalizing the process will allow them to work with more farmers. 

“If you have 400 farmers, you can’t talk to every one of them every day,” he says. The platform also aims to build trust between buyer and seller by verifying information, such as ensuring sustainability compliance by the grower for buyers who need assurances and offering financing for farmers, he says.

Bennett says one of the immediate challenges with technology is that new software can be expensive and with farm incomes pressured by high input costs and low farmgate prices, it may be difficult for farmers to invest. Mixed equipment brands and their technology can also be a challenge since it may take producers extra steps to have the equipment communicate, such as hitching one company’s planter equipment to another’s tractor.

An ongoing evolution

There are also concerns about balancing privacy and transparency. James says in the beginning it was difficult for her to convince participants in the identity-preserved industry to share commercially sensitive information, and she says it’s still an issue for some people. 

“You’ve got to work really hard to get people’s trust and be consistent,” she says.

Schreiner concurs. “Just because you’re sharing and becoming visible doesn’t mean that you’re losing your independence. It doesn’t mean that you’re creating a security or privacy or an oversight problem or regulation problem,” he says.

The agriculture industry is still in its early stages of how to handle large-scale data collection, so it is still working out questions about infrastructure, data management and the new risks these changes could introduce.

“If you have really good information, you can either use the tools available more efficiently, or you can come up with new tools entirely,”

– Kellee James, founder and CEO
of Mercaris, now Argus AgriMarkets Organic

Yet Schreiner says being one of the later industries to transform could work in agriculture’s favor since it can look to sectors such as healthcare and finance to see how they’ve addressed those challenges.

“We’re going to leverage all that research for years and years to short circuit the amount of time it takes us to figure out the mechanics of doing that,” he says. 

James says with more data could come greater price-risk tools, which may eventually include insurance products tailored to these producers and end-users, or even better derivatives contracts to hedge.

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