Bridging the gap: How the Ag industry can tackle data misalignment together
Adrian Kelly
These days, with the amount of data swirling in the Ag retail value chain — and Ag industry in general — there’s no shortage of examples of data misalignment.
When it comes to a manufacturer’s customer list vs. the GLNs they receive from their retailer partners, the gap can sometimes be wide. Inevitably, this misalignment in grower data leads to downstream challenges: internal confusion, inefficient processes, and incorrect rebate payments, to name a few.
So, if we know a lack of standardization or cross-referencing causes these issues, what’s stopping the industry from solving the problem?
The complexity of grower data
Most organizations in the Ag industry rely on AGIIS as a trusted standard for managing customer data. While AGIIS uses the GS1 standard — where a GLN (Global Location Number) is designed to represent a specific business or location — real-world challenges arise when GLNs are used to represent different levels of a hierarchy. For instance, a GLN might point to a parent organization instead of the specific farm location where a transaction occurred.
Complicating things further, growers are often listed in multiple ways across databases, creating duplicate records:
Bob J Farmer
J Farmer’s LLC
J Farmer - Langdon
The result? Trading partners may only accept certain versions of this data. One might recognize “Bob J Farmer,” while another only accepts “J Farmer’s LLC.” This forces manufacturers to maintain their own internal customer lists — their own “version of the truth” — based on which records they trust and accept. Because these lists are foundational to how manufacturers view their customers (and how they pay), they’re understandably hesitant to change.
Still, this lack of standardization creates inefficiencies throughout the value chain. Without a reliable way to cross-reference customer data among trading partners, it’s no surprise that confusion and errors remain common.
A shared challenge
Manufacturers and retailers alike have voiced frustrations about the challenges of misaligned grower IDs. Manufacturers often share that “we eventually get it done,” but only after hours of back-and-forth to resolve mismatched records. Retailers echo this sentiment, explaining how much time they spend reworking data to fit each manufacturer’s specific requirements.
The lost time and effort slow down operations for everyone involved. Could there be a better way to streamline these processes and reduce the back-and-forth?
How clear mappings could help
One possible approach is to allow manufacturers to clearly designate which ID applies to each grower, just as they already provide lists for reportable products. This clarity would reduce guesswork for retailers, minimize errors, and improve efficiency across the board.
It’s worth considering: what if manufacturers could maintain their internal “view of the grower landscape” while also communicating it more effectively to trading partners? By providing cross-references that align with their internal lists — much like price lists or product lists are shared today — manufacturers could ensure data flows more smoothly through the value chain.
Exploring solutions
At Smartwyre, we’ve seen how clarifying data requirements can help solve these challenges. For instance, we manage more than 1.4 million grower records and data tied to tens of millions of transactions. By connecting to APIs and using user interface-driven mapping and cross-referencing tools, we help businesses simplify how they align grower data with their trading partners.
Our approach builds on lessons learned from addressing similar challenges in other areas of agribusiness. For example, we’ve worked to make data ingestion more transparent by identifying and surfacing the fixes needed for transactions, rather than relying on “black box” processes. By clarifying data requirements upfront, manufacturers and retailers can focus less on rework and more on building stronger trading relationships.
This kind of clarity is especially important when implementing standardized identifiers, as seen with the case of a major manufacturer’s Grower ID system. By requiring reporting to include their internal Grower IDs, they reduced errors by roughly 70% and significantly improved efficiency. However, this approach also highlighted common industry challenges:
Unclear mappings: Without visibility into which grower record aligns with which ID, errors can go undetected until payments are sent to the wrong party.
Entity mismatches: A single grower ID may need to map to multiple GLNs (or vice versa), making simple cross-references insufficient.
Smartwyre’s platform is ready to handle these challenges today. We can already handle one-to-many relationships (e.g., grower splits) and many-to-one relationships (e.g., multiple ID mappings), enabling manufacturers to view and manage the data exactly how they need it. By partnering with manufacturers, we can help ensure retailers have clear guidance on which identifier to choose, reducing confusion and back-and-forth while improving the overall experience for everyone involved.
Our goal is simple: to make grower data alignment easier and more efficient, freeing up valuable time and resources for manufacturers, distributors, and retailers alike.
What’s next for the industry?
Data alignment isn’t a problem that will be solved overnight. It’s a shared challenge across manufacturers, retailers, and distributors — and one that requires collaboration to address. What’s clear is that with the right approach and tools, businesses can reduce inefficiencies and improve trading relationships without upending how they already operate.
Could streamlining how grower IDs are managed be the next step forward? And if so, how might your organization approach the problem?
