Getting To Know Cultivate IQ, a Next Level Farm-To-Market Tool
October 16, 2024 
A transparent supply chain seems easy enough to build. But consider taking that supply chain information and adding in sales and production data that will help you to know how much to grow. Think of how much food wouldn’t be wasted each year. With a little help from artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, a University of Arkansas team, led by the Institute for Integrative and Innovative Research (I3R), aims to improve regional farm-to-market supply chains. This translates to what and how much you should grow. Make sure to keep an eye out for Cultivate IQ, an innovative new technology led by Meredith Adkins with industry partners Cureate and Junction AI, and leadership team Kristen Gibson, Ngan Le, Chase Rainwater, Jada Thompson, and Philip Sambol, Project Manager.
Why Arkansas? The state steadily ranks in the nation’s top one-third for agricultural cash farm receipts, based on the latest Arkansas Agricultural Profile, available at uada.edu/docs/2023_AR_Ag_profile.pdf.
Cultivate IQ’s potential is impressive. It will forecast regional consumer demand and suggest pricing for the crops that grow best in the users’ regions. In addition, the University of Arkansas team is in partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Madison to integrate their Compass Tools — cost-of-production calculators — that support farmers in making profitability analyses.
Locally focused food distributors — such as food hubs, farm cooperatives, government entities, or service agencies that support small- to medium-sized farms — will host Cultivate IQ, according to the team leads. By hosting the platform and onboarding their supplier networks, these vital liaisons in the regional food system will help farmers access critical market information and decision support tools that are not available to specialty crop farmers today.
“The Cultivate IQ platform will leverage natural language interface (like ChatGPT), so users can easily ask questions of the data and get answers in plain English,” Adkins says. “Our technology team is also utilizing AI computer vision to analyze GIS satellite and local drone data to provide users with regional supply and land use information.”
Farmers’ Role in Phase 2
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Convergence Accelerator program funds this work, so there is a strong focus on bringing together government, academia, and industry to develop solutions to the challenging issues facing our food system. The project focuses on the needs of farmers and food distributors and continues to seek feedback to ensure that the design is continually improved and responsive to user needs, Adkins says.”
The team interviewed dozens of farmers, local food distributors, and farm service providers about their needs and pain points in Phase 1. As they advance in Phase 2 this year and next, they welcome farmers, food hubs, and distributors to reach out to demo the platform. If you’re interested, you can reach them at https://forms.uark.edu/xfp/form/790.
End-Use Market Drivers
The end-use markets driving the insights in Cultivate IQ around consumer demand (and insights for planting decisions) will depend on the end-use markets for the intermediary organization hosting the platform.
Cultivate IQ is intended to serve these primary end users by communicating within their farm supply network to better meet buyer demand, enhancing their roles as production coordinators.
“Retail and wholesale data is an integral part of the platform’s market insights, given that the majority of Americans (around 89%) purchase their groceries primarily from supermarkets, and the team seeks to support more local food to be sold on grocery shelves,” Sambol explains. “However, end users, such as food hubs, may also sell to restaurants, hospitals, or direct-to-consumer. These sales also can be tracked and forecasted to bring in relevant market insights that can support farmers in their planting decisions.”
Cultivate IQ team members pictured here: Estaban Duran Marti, Ngan Le, Meredith Adkins, John Hendrickson, Kim Bryden, Philip Sambol, Benjamin Sapaning, and Malcolm Williamson.
Photo courtesy of University of Arkansas System
Goals and Guidelines Farmers will Need to Meet and Why
The primary platform host, rather than Cultivate IQ, will set quality assurance guidelines and vet products, according to the team.
For example, food hubs, farm cooperatives, and other food distributors follow a number of protocols in their purchasing decisions with local farms, such as requiring GAP certification or other third-party audit schemes. The team’s intention is to make production insights more accessible to food distributors and growers, and this may include insights around the food safety practices or crop disease risks, adding more nuance to pricing and demand insights.
Phase 2: Specialty Crops
While the platform is built to handle a wide range of product categories, the team has focused its work to date on fruits and vegetables, because that is the greatest opportunity for small- and mid-sized growers to access larger markets. The Cultivate IQ platform will address this with the market insights and forecasting tools specialty crop growers need to plan their production.
For row crops, the commodity markets provide ready information about demand and pricing, but fruit and vegetable growers face barriers to accessing capital and land due to the uncertainty in their markets. To start, Cultivate IQ will focus specifically on crops that grow well in Arkansas and Oklahoma. Over time, the team will add regions to expand the coverage of regionally relevant insights for every region in the country.
Global Food Supply Impacts
According to the University of Arkansas:
- one-third of food produced globally for human consumption is wasted each year
- weather events and climate change, pests and diseases prevent 30% of global food production from entering the farm-to-fork supply chain
- supply chain inefficiencies result in the loss of 14% of the global food supply
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