When deployed to production, only the schema is copied, not the data.
You will have to either write code to copy the data (for example, JSON, as you mentioned, or save the data locally in CoreData, synchronize with the development environment, then switch to the production environment, re-run the code and re-synchronize) or re-enter it manually.
If you use code, switch between the development and production environment using the rights file, mine is given below for reference (change Production to Development as necessary and rebuild your code):

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