We are delighted to introduce the updated version of "Feeding the World through Analytics," an Editor’s Cut on agribusiness. The field of agribusiness is making rapid advancements using analytics in academic, public sector, and industry environments. To reflect these developments, this second edition features three major enhancements. First, the content has been updated and includes recent high-impact articles and other media on agribusiness analytics from a variety of sources. Second, these resources are now organized and presented in categories meant to provide readers with direct access to articles in subfields of interest. Four of these categories are domain-specific: Inputs and Production; Processing and Logistics; Markets; and Public Policy and Regulation. The fifth category showcases pedagogical material based on agribusiness problems, which is the third major enhancement. The new pedagogy material includes business cases, classroom games, and simulations. Our hope is that this teaching material will lead to a greater inclusion of the interesting and important field of agribusiness in analytics education. More than ever, agribusiness needs the advanced analytics and artificial intelligence skills of INFORMS members as it faces the twin challenges of a changing climate and a growing population. We are grateful to INFORMS for hosting this focused volume on agribusiness. Now we present a bit more background on agribusiness.

Agriculture has played an important role in human life. Earliest cities formed and expanded around regions where humans could cultivate crops. The need for efficient food production led to advances in numerous fields, including some developments in scientifically managing agribusinesses that have become important milestones in operations research (O.R.) and statistics. For example, the theory of regression was developed for animal husbandry; the theory of design of experiments was developed for creating new varieties of seeds; and integer programming was developed for harvesting timber. These agribusiness contexts posed real problems that were challenging and difficult to solve, and their solutions led to significant contributions to mathematical theory. Agribusiness also has been a driving force for commercial analytic offerings. The well-known data analytics software company, SAS Institute Inc., traces its roots to agribusiness. Its software grew out of a North Carolina State University project to analyze crop yield data for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Today, agribusiness is of particular interest to academicians, industry, and policymakers. There is a greater awareness that more food, fuel, and fiber will be needed for a growing population with the same or less natural resources. Agriculture uses nearly one-third of fresh available water. Water is becoming a scarce commodity in developing as well as developed nations, and this scarcity has led to an increased emphasis in optimizing water use in agriculture. Agribusiness is the second leading cause of greenhouse gases as well as one of the largest contributors to water pollution. Sustainability concerns dictate that we take scientifically measured steps to make progress on these dimensions. The growing availability of agricultural data and advances in analytics capabilities has the potential to address the pressing issues of sustainable agriculture in ways and at a scale never before possible.

The materials in this Editor's Cut underscore the promise of using analytics to improve agribusiness for years to come and the potential positive impact of these improvements on businesses, individuals, and society at large.