DFC Introduction

The DFC Standard makes it easier to share short foodchain systems data across platforms.

What is it?

The DFC Standard is a standardized way to represent the data needed to supply, sell & deliver products through a short supply chain. Requests for and offers of products, customer and purchase orders, and data required by logistics providers to ship products are all examples of data the DFC Standard supports. By standardizing the representation of this data, we facilitate the exchange of data between platforms and organizations without having to undertake custom development for each exchange of data.

The DFC Standard is a way to represent the Organizations, Products and Logistics within short foodchain systems.

The standard ensures the data is represented in specific ways that computers (and software engineers) can understand. The representations can be used to build a database, or stored in other data related structures. They can be mapped onto an existing data model within a platform.

In basic terms, the DFC Standard says:

“There are entities which undertake actions within the food system (Actors), these actors can be people or organizations. Actors can request or present Products to the market for consumption.

Products can be Ordered by other Actors. An Actor can Order many Products and many Actors can Order the same Product (assuming there is capacity to supply sufficient stock).

Once Ordered, the Product needs to be transferred to a different Actor. Information is required to facilitate that transfer: details of a Physical Pickup Location (located in both space and time), and potentially Shipping & Delivery details.

The DFC Standard aims to be a comprehensive model of Short Food Supply Chains.

It does not specify what Products should be, although there are Taxonomies (or vocabularies) that help us to place related Products together (e.g. the productType taxonomy) – but it does define how and where that data is stored and compared. It is an organizing system, it provides outlines that you can fit whatever data you’re working with into.

The DFC Standard makes it easy to store, share, aggregate and analyze Short Food Supply Chain data. And because we did our homework, you can feel confident that this organizing system will accommodate your data needs as your organization continues to evolve its offerings: food hubs; box schemes; procurement; logistics; secondary producers. The DFC Standard can accommodate them all.

Who should use the DFC Standard?

The short answer is “everyone”, well, almost everyone…

The DFC Standard is intentionally designed to support regenerative, agroecological food systems. It does not support industrialized food systems, with long a brittle cold-chains and many intermediaries. It will work with the data you have in your organization, and we are actively working to integrate it into more of the major platforms.

Currently the DFC Standard is integrated, to some degree, into the following platforms:

• Socleo
• Open Food Network
• Shopify
• BigBarn
• Ordle
• Ooooby
• Mycellium

How to start using the DFC Standard

Whilst we say the DFC Standard is “for everyone”, really (unless you’re a platform owner or software developer) you won’t “use” it directly. Hopefully you’re barely even notice it’s there. If you’re involved in the epic work of transforming our food system, then you just need to use one (or more) of the platforms that are aligning with it, and that will enable you to seamlessly share data across the network.

The people that need to understand and work with the DFC Standard are the software developers & data modellers. They ensure the standard is embedded in into the software whilst they’re being built or updated. The Producers using the software will know that their data is being aligned with the DFC Standard & can now interoperate with other aligned software, but otherwise they don’t need to concern themselves with it.

Why use the DFC Standard

Producers that use the DFC Standard are aligning themselves with a collaborative future for agroecological food production, they unlock the ability to share product, order and logistics data across multiple platforms in the local food space and empower us all to foster diversity at scale.

Data interoperability

When we talk about data standards, the concept of interoperability often comes up. When data is interoperable, it means it can be shared, immediately, between different software systems/platforms.

The advantage of using the ontology within the DFC Standard to represent your data is that it can be easily shared, aggregated, and migrated seamlessly.

It means you can move your data freely between hosts, with no overhead. An end to vendor lock-in.

It means software platforms can collaborate so you can use the best tool for each job – whether that’s a shiny shopfront, complex order aggregation across multiple producers for your food hub, or route planning and logistics.

While the DFC Standard is still new, only those using networks that are all using the DFC Standard will benefit from the interoperability it enables. It’s like the telephone, which made communication across distances simpler and easier. However that only has value if the people you want to talk to also have access to a telephone. Being able to simply and easily share order, product and enterprise data will be valuable when we have thriving, diverse, local food eco-systems that need to collaborate to meet the needs of there customers.

Linked data

The DFC Standard is using linked data to represent the standard. Like web pages enable us to link different sites around the world together, so linked data enables linking of data across different systems. Given a defined set of terms in a vocabulary or ontology, linked data standards allow the assigning of a globally unique identifier to each term. When different software platforms use these unique identifiers, the software knows they are referring to the same term, which removes ambiguity and allows systems to collaborate automatically.

Using the DFC Standard can lead to:

1. Sophisticated analysis: The DFC Standard allows aggregation of data (through common terms) to ensure we can take a more complete view of local food retail, with many more opportunities for analysis of that data – leads to a better understanding of markets, consumer habits and what can help local food ecosystems to succeed.
2. Less paperwork: Automation of purchase order automation, product catalogue sharing and more, can lead to less overheads for local food businesses – giving more time to focus on producing quality products and getting them to the customers that need them.
3. Greater visibility: The DFC Standard allows you to share you Product and Enterprise data across multiple platforms, with minimal effort. That can lead to increased visbility and translate to more sales.

The bottom line – and what next?

 We believe the DFC Standard represents a quantum leap for local food ecosystems, improving flexibility, visibility and impact. It opens the door to an era of collaboration between businesses that can drive market penetration and unlock hitherto inaccessible markets.

The DFC Standard is the glue to that collaborative ecosystem – removing obstacles to collaboration – initially around retail product/order data and then collaborating with logistics providers, driving further efficiencies across the sector.

If you are an organization interested in the DFC Standard, the easiest thing to do is use software that already aligns:

1. If you already use a software platform – ask your current software provider to contact us to discuss alignment.
2. If you do not already use a platform, consider using one that is aligned.
3. If you don’t want to use a software platform, consider contacting us to discuss other integration options.