[zhengyi13]

I think there's also significant value to the supply chain if there's evidence that certain strains have a committed market over time. You get better informed decisions on what to deprecate/not grow in the future, and if you have a dedicated customer base for a particular strain, you've got data telling you exactly how much growing space to dedicate to that.

[anigbrowl]

True, but I am not seeing the claimed consumer surplus. Data-driven decision-making is good up to a point, but it too easily becomes an excuse for chasing the lowest common denominator, because it mistakes popularity for quality. Budweiser is (I think) the most popular beer int e US, but anyone who likes beer knows it's not particularly good, it's just the least bad across multiple criteria.