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Agricultural industry

Enhancing Food System Studies with Traceable and Scalable Data

Strategic Insights

— 1 min read

Researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have developed a new dataset, called Traceable Food Balance Sheets (T-FBS), to improve the accuracy and scalability of food system studies. The T-FBS dataset, developed from detailed Supply Utilization Accounts (SUA), includes 57 Primary Commodity equivalent (PCe) commodities across 195 regions for the period 2010-2022. This new dataset provides a transparent and consistent framework for analyzing food systems, enabling the identification of key uncertainties in areas such as feed, trade, and stocks.

Key Takeaways:

  • The Food Balance Sheets (FBS) dataset, compiled by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), has limited transparency and scalability, hindering its application in empirical analysis and multisector dynamic modeling.
  • The new Traceable Food Balance Sheets (T-FBS) dataset, developed from detailed Supply Utilization Accounts (SUA) using a novel Primary Commodity equivalent (PCe) aggregation approach, enhances methodological transparency, traceability, and scalability.
  • The T-FBS dataset includes 57 PCe commodities across 195 regions for the period 2010-2022, consolidated from over 500 SUA products.
  • The research identified key uncertainties in elements such as feed, trade, and stocks, highlighting the importance of transparent and consistent data in food system studies.
  • The T-FBS dataset strengthens the robustness of food system studies and fosters future research and collaboration within the open-source community.
  • Xin Zhao, Joint Global Change Research Institute, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, was a key researcher on this project, along with Maksym Chepeliev, Neus Escobar, Matthew T. Binsted, Pralit Patel, Page Kyle, and Marshall A. Wise.

Statistics:

  • The T-FBS dataset includes 57 PCe commodities.
  • The database covers 195 regions across the world.
  • The dataset spans the period from 2010 to 2022.
  • Over 500 SUA products were consolidated to develop the T-FBS dataset.
  • The research identified key uncertainties in elements such as feed, trade, and stocks.

Sources:

  • Traceable and Scalable Food Balance Sheets from Agricultural Commodity Supply and Utilization Accounts (2010-2022). Scientific Data, 2025, 12(1):1-17.

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