A dramatic and real story of how the IoT and location intelligence could have saved the US spinach industry- for background see link to article below.

 Food safety, quality and sustainability is ripe ( not a pun) for exploiting the IoT from the field to the retail shelf.

Sensors are not the only answer though. Adding visual, location and contextual data via tablets and phones adds to the picture. Look at Muddy Boots Software's implementation at Waitrose .

The insurance industry is already embracing telematics as a data source in managing policies and claims. Some have added video, photo and speech data input. The claimant is sent a link and asked to take photos and video of damage. The rich metadata can be analysed to compare with information on webform accident reports. Is the location the same? Is it a current photo or one taken a month previously. 

This makes it easier for operations to make decisions to accept the claim, investigate further or treat as fraudulent. The net effect has been to speed up claims processing, improve efficiency in the supply chain, strip out unnecessary costs in the insurance company. See this happen with video and photo data in motor insurance

The same can be achieved in the food supply chain  utilising phones and tablets to take video, photo images, augment with text and voice. Add this to sensor/IoT data and you get the full picture.- Realtime and batch data analytics. Add Location Intelligence you can combine spatial and GIS data to enrich insights and better predict potential problems and opportunities. If only the spinach industry had used location data in this way it may have averted this disaster.

Complete Agrimetrics, big data analytics, IoT analytics. However you term it- it is The Full Monty.