Beyond compliance: How commodity data is becoming the grain value chain's next strategic asset

In recent years, sustainability data collection has been treated as a cost of doing business: a reporting requirement, an audit line, a box to tick. Across the grain value chain, that framing is quietly being dismantled. Some are starting to realize that the real prize isn't the report – it's what the data underneath it can unlock.

The hidden opportunity beyond the carbon footprint

Carbon footprints, supplier scorecards, EU disclosure rules – none of that is going away. But treating data collection purely as a compliance exercise is a losing game. As Marie Liétard-Montigny, Head of France & Spain at Improvin', put it: „If you only look at sustainability data through a reporting lens, the returns are very limited. The real opportunity unlocks once that same data can inform sourcing decisions, supplier resilience – and ultimately directly impact the cost of operations."

The more interesting question is what happens once reliable, farm-level data actually exists. It can inform sourcing decisions instead of just documenting them. It can flag which suppliers are building resilience and which are exposed to climate risk. It allows for product differentiation and for getting a granular understanding of the total cost of sourcing.

A case in point: Harmony

Mondelez has been building toward this for close to two decades. Its Harmony program, the company's wheat sustainability charter since 2008, already reaches 80% of its European biscuit brands and two billion packs a year. This year, Harmony is taking its next step: evolving from a private, Mondelez-governed label into an open, third-party-certified standard available to the wider industry – a direct response to both the EU's Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition directive and to growing demand from consumers and retailers for credible, verifiable claims.

Underpinning that shift is a data platform, built with Improvin', that lets primary farm data flow from over 40 supplying mills and cooperatives across nine countries into a single, trusted hub. Emissions are calculated through a direct connection to the Cool Farm Tool, and Harmony-specific KPIs are generated automatically – both for external reporting and to guide the wheat chain itself.

Mondelez has evolved from a proprietary spreadsheet to an infrastructure adopted by multiple cooperatives, mills and CPGs across Europe and the US such as Nordzucker, Moulins Maselis, Fazer, Paulig, and Goodmills. As the industry moves toward common goals, proprietary excels become a nightmare for suppliers. Instead, the shared infrastructure offered by Improvin’ lets each actor answer specific requests from different clients from a common database and protect farmer data through layers of anonymisation.

What it means for a miller

For millers, the payoff is concrete. A shared data infrastructure means being able to allocate every volume of wheat to a specific customer and generate a matching report – carbon footprint, full emission-factor breakdown, audit-ready. It means answering a customer's request for a low-carbon flour with evidence. Improvin's data collection process has recently obtained limited assurance from the Carbon Trust, adding full methodology disclosure for comparability, with a data quality score for added transparency in the works.

And because the grain is only part of a flour's footprint, a new integration with Bühler's sustainability services now extends that traceability further – giving mills full flour emissions across scopes 1, 2 and 3, from field to finished flour.

Millers including Berte Qvarn, Mühle Rüningen, Moulins Maselis were early adopters; GoodMills is the most recent. Each has made the same bet: that a credible, third-party-backed data infrastructure is worth more than the sum of the reports it produces.

The strategic case

Strip away the sustainability framing for a moment, and what's left is a straightforward infrastructure decision. „At Improvin', we see ourselves as a data supply chain that follows the grain supply chain," says Marie Liétard-Montigny of Improvin'. "Give the industry a shared, trusted infrastructure, and every actor – from farmer to global brand – can stop spending their time on admin and start spending it on the decisions that actually move the business."

Companies that build trusted, granular data pipelines now – because a regulator or a customer asked for them – are also the ones best positioned to put AI to work on that data next: predicting supply risk, optimizing sourcing, spotting margin opportunities a spreadsheet never could. Sustainability reporting turned out to be the reason the industry finally got serious about its data. It is now time to witness the effects of data-driven decisions across the entire business.

Niklas, CEO of Improvin' – who grew up on a farm and has spent the past decade building technology for the industry – says the pace of change is unlike anything he's seen: „We're watching the pioneers of our data platform, and now of our newest AI product, open doors to operational excellence by making the strategic decision to structure their data. I’m the most hopeful I have ever been for this industry."

About Improvin’

Improvin’ delivers data infrastructure for the agri-food supply chain. Its industry-leading data platforms enable agri-food companies to act on trustworthy data. Improvin’ connects farm, supplier and raw material data, transforming fragmented information into clear insights, better sourcing decisions and measurable business outcomes. Headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, Improvin’ works with companies, such as Mondelēz International, Nordzucker and AAK, and their partners to accelerate agricultural resilience globally.

Improvin.com