The passage of the 2020 U.S. Farm Bill in December 2020 introduced significant measures to enhance supply chain traceability for critical agricultural commodities, particularly dairy and soybean products. Among the reforms was a strengthened mandate for transparency in crop insurance data, which aimed to provide greater visibility into indemnity payments, yield trends, and farm-level production risks. This move reflected growing concerns among policymakers and market participants about the resilience of agricultural supply chains, especially in the wake of climate-related disruptions and disease outbreaks that had repeatedly tested the stability of food systems.
The availability of detailed open data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) offered cooperatives and producers an unprecedented opportunity to align their internal records with national traceability objectives. For dairy and soybean cooperatives, integrating these data resources became essential not only for compliance with federal standards, but also for maintaining market access in domestic and export markets where traceability and risk transparency had become critical purchasing criteria.
To operationalize the Farm Bill’s traceability requirements, cooperatives began by linking USDA’s open data sets on indemnity payments and yield metrics with their own member-producer records. This process involved downloading indemnity payment records, which contained data on insurance claims, cause of loss, and payment amounts at the county and, where available, farm level. Similarly, yield data provided historical and current production metrics across regions, which could be integrated into supply-chain risk models.
Cooperatives then mapped this information against their internal producer identification systems, ensuring that each member’s data were correctly linked to geocoded field locations. This mapping typically required the use of geographic information systems (GIS) software, which allowed cooperatives to plot farm boundaries, field-level production units, and associated insurance data on digital maps. Through this integration, cooperatives created a robust data backbone that enabled rapid trace-back of dairy or soy shipments in the event of contamination alerts, fraud investigations, or sudden market disruptions.
This level of traceability not only facilitated regulatory compliance, but also supported the cooperatives’ own risk management and quality assurance programs by providing a clear view of where and how key agricultural products were being produced. A critical component of meeting the Farm Bill’s transparency goals was the publication of regional risk profiles that captured the interplay between production risks and external factors such as weather variability and disease outbreaks.
To build these profiles, cooperatives extracted key indicators from USDA’s indemnity and yield data, such as the frequency of insurance claims linked to drought, excessive moisture, or disease across different growing seasons. They then combined these indicators with data from open meteorological and plant-health surveillance systems, creating comprehensive regional snapshots of production risk exposure. The profiles detailed trends in weather patterns, disease incidence rates, and the resilience of dairy and soy production systems, offering valuable insights to buyers, insurers, and public authorities.
Cooperatives published these risk profiles on their websites or in annual sustainability reports, using clear visualizations such as heat maps, bar charts, and time-series graphs to communicate key findings. By doing so, they demonstrated proactive engagement with the Farm Bill’s data transparency agenda while enhancing trust among stakeholders concerned with food safety, supply-chain stability, and environmental stewardship.
To ensure consistent and effective reporting, cooperatives adopted standardized checklists for publishing their regional risk profiles. These checklists covered the selection and validation of data sources, ensuring that all published figures were derived from verified USDA open data sets and reputable meteorological services. They also included steps for anonymizing sensitive producer data while retaining sufficient detail for meaningful regional analysis.
The checklists guided teams through the development of visual formats that met accessibility and clarity standards, including the use of color schemes that were legible to individuals with color vision deficiencies and the inclusion of explanatory notes for technical terms. Finally, cooperatives reviewed their profiles for alignment with industry best practices and federal guidelines, ensuring that all disclosures supported broader supply-chain traceability and risk management objectives. Through these efforts, the agricultural sector made significant strides in fulfilling the Farm Bill’s vision of a transparent, data-driven food system that could better withstand the challenges of a rapidly changing global landscape.