High Expectations for the Impact of Agricultural DX

In recent years, DX has been accelerating in various fields regardless of industry, and among them, the agricultural business is expected to undergo a major transformation. Especially in environments where business is conducted on vast land like the United States, it is thought that utilizing data from various phases, from production to logistics, will have a significant impact, starting with efficiency improvement.

Marubeni, which has handled agricultural products all over the world as a general trading company, also saw a great opportunity in DX. The mapping project that Marubeni has been promoting with its American subsidiary Columbia Grain International (CGI) since 2022 can be said to be an initiative that symbolizes DX in agriculture.

The goal of this project was to develop a general-purpose mapping application that integrates various data related to crops. In grain production, grains are collected and processed at large-scale facilities called “grain elevators” scattered throughout the area, but until now, information on each elevator has been dispersed.

Visualizing Diverse Data on a Map

In response to the consultation from CGI, The Digital Innovation team at Marubeni America Corporation (MAC) put various data related to grains on a single map. The data used for the map created by this project is truly diverse. In addition to publicly available information such as datasets summarizing crop types and production volumes published by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and railroad route data, CGI provides information on elevators, the types of crops grown around them, production volumes, and even competitor information. All kinds of data were mapped on the map.

Of course, it’s not just about putting data on a map. After developing the data infrastructure, the MAC Digital Innovation team developed a dashboard and created tools that can analyze changes in the amount of grain handled by each elevator and market share against regional production volume over time.

This system was built by combining multiple tools such as “ArcGIS,” a platform for comprehensively managing geographic information, and “Tableau,” a data visualization tool specializing in BI (Business Intelligence), and Microsoft Azure. The combination of these tools has ensured flexibility and improved customizability.

By utilizing such data, personal knowledge and experience are visualized, and efficient information sharing within the company is expected to be realized. Furthermore, business decision-making will become clearer by conducting new elevator development to expand market share, comparative analysis with competitors, and analysis of production volume by season. The map and dashboard created by this project could be a powerful tool to support CGI’s strategic decision-making.

To Accelerate Data-Driven Decision Making

Currently, the development of this mapping tool is in its final stage, and adjustments are being made so that many staff members can use the tool without having specialized technical skills. This is because its impact will be maximized only by realizing a tool that anyone can use, regardless of their business area, such as elevator management, sales, or investment strategy formulation.

Furthermore, in the future, it is expected that the efficiency of grain production and transportation will be further improved by incorporating various data such as crop production volumes, open data, GPS information, logistics traffic volume, and weather. By being able to handle dynamic information such as “year-on-year changes in production volume and production volume of competitors” from static information such as “cultivated area around elevators” that has been conventionally handled, data-driven decision-making will be further accelerated.

The development of data infrastructure and mapping interface that this project has tackled could be an excellent template not only for grain production and transportation and agricultural business, but also for various data utilization. In businesses that handle various resources, such as general trading companies, the impact of cross-sectional data utilization should continue to increase in the future.