Food Agility CRC

While Australia’s academic research capabilities are globally ranked, there is a gap between research focuses and real industry challenges. Food Agility CRC, an innovation hub funded by its partners and the Australian government, aims to bring the benefits of Australia’s world-class research to the agrifood industry.

Our team first needed to identify the cause of delay between data generation and actionable insights. What are the roadblocks in trust and communication between food producers, processors, tech partners, and researchers? How can we accelerate the sharing of data and research to and from farmers and partners? Food Agility’s value proposition needed to address these questions by identifying the intersecting needs of their partner ecosystem.

Through in-depth interviews with stakeholders and Food Agility’s partners, we gained an understanding of their partner ecosystem, which spans the whole food system, including private, public, and nonprofit sectors. In this phase, we identified actionable insights regarding partner relationships and mapped out the network of needs and obstacles to building trust between partners. After identifying and testing the first version of the value proposition, we discovered that technology alone may not address the main challenge in data-sharing, so further iterations focused on fostering relationships and enhancing confidence between partners.

Our team designed and validated Canopy 2.0, an intersecting value proposition with three pillars: Essential Foundations, Common Understanding, and Evolving Support. It addresses the connected needs and pain points of farmers, researchers, and tech providers by increasing transparency and support for food producers and processors. By facilitating trust and transparency in Food Agility’s ecosystem, Canopy 2.0 aims to accelerate data-sharing and reduce project sign-off time by over 50%.