With a goal of helping growers make data-informed business decisions, the U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council (USHBC) has launched an effort to develop a best-in-class data and insights program for the blueberry industry. 

The first step toward making the project a reality was the hiring of Joe Vargas as the council’s director of business intelligence. In this role, Vargas is collecting, analyzing, and communicating data to growers and industry experts. He’s also building the Blueberry Industry Production and Pricing Data Collection Program, an industrywide analytics platform designed to educate growers and help expand blueberry demand globally. 

USHBC recently selected Bytecode IO to assist with the creation of the production and pricing program. 

“This program represents a pivotal moment for the blueberry industry – one that reflects our emphasis on the use of data to track the effectiveness of efforts to increase the production, sales and value of the blueberry crop produced domestically for U.S. consumption and export markets, and the sales and value of blueberries imported to the U.S.,” Vargas says. 

“Participation from blueberry producers and marketers is crucial to the program’s success. USHBC is already working with a sample data set to start developing a model of the data capture and reporting. The second phase of work will expand on the initial sample set of data, ultimately reflecting a supermajority of blueberry volume, both imported and sold in the U.S.,” he added. 

A deeper dive into the data and insights program, and the partnership with Bytecode IO, is available on an episode of “The Business of Blueberries” podcast at bit.ly/3SgaURj.

“The USHBC is headed in a data-driven direction that will allow us to provide industry insights to help growers make decisions and help drive profitability. This is about more than inventories, what was sold yesterday and what we expect to sell tomorrow. This information will also highlight data like how blueberries are doing at retail and what consumers are looking for,” Vargas explains on the podcast.  

Vargas will reveal the platform at The Blueberry Summit on October 5-7 in Nashville and explain how the industry can get involved. There’s still time to register for the event at https://www.blueberryevents.org.