How Good IS Your Traceability?

 

According to the CDC, the E. coli-affected lettuce has been linked to the Yuma, Arizona, growing region, but so far no individual grower, supplier, distributor, or brand has been identified. The CDC advises everybody to avoid buying or eating romaine lettuce from a grocery store or restaurant unless the romaine is known to not be from the Yuma, Arizona, growing region. Orlando Sentinel April 24, 2018

Same Old Thing

Years ago one of my colleagues and I at John Deere FoodOrigins attended several fresh produce and food processor trade shows in an effort to poll companies in that business sector concerning their capabilities to trace and track their products in the supply chain. The answer from each of these agri-food entities was the same – WE HAVE IT!

Of course they have it but then the follow up question was just how good their traceability was? It is not a binary thing, it is a level of sophistication, rigor and procedural issue. How does one measure their ability to trace backward or track forward in the chain? Since there are no standards once one delivers the answer to the first question then there is no need for any follow up.

Not So Great

So how does an entire variety of lettuce from THE primary growing region for leafy greens this time of year have a Schwarzenegger-like “Total Recall”? I would venture to say that while there are only a handful of companies growing, buying, packing and packaging Romain Lettuce not one of them could tell the market – it’s not mine and I can prove it.

Food products that are comingled at a plant or in a bin or elevator, like grain, can be difficult to identify the exact origin of those finished goods. That being said one should have the wherewithal to isolate a contaminate if it can be isolated at the last link in the chain prior to being ingested by some unfortunate consumer.

It Ain't Easy

Traceability is hard. It requires a set of protocols that are both tedious and onerous. Yet the importance of such practices are evident when the entire country is throwing out their salad makings just in case it is tainted with E. Coli. The cost to the industry must be enormous not just in this single event but for some time to come as consumers may shy away from all lettuce products for some period of time.

Contrary to popular beliefs this is not about bar codes and RFID technologies. Putting a sticker on the box, bag or bin does not solve the problem. It may help streamline the process but it does not replace it.

Measure to Manage Requires Standards

My guess is that there are a number of CEOs of food processing companies that might be asking the question that we asked many years ago – “How good is our traceability?” Without a set of standards for measuring it the answer might be that most people just don’t know, oh, and there are no standards.

World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit Musings

Who's Who Agri  Food Tech

Last week I attended this event in San Francisco highlighting the latest advancements in agri-food technology hosted by Rethink. Over 900 people representing some 450 companies and institutions participated in this global gathering of scientists, engineers, financiers, marketing/sales people, entrepreneurs, public service/government representatives, academicians as well as consultants like myself.

I have participated in this event in the past and certainly this year exceeded my expectations as to what may have changed in this “fast-paced” market sector. Note the quotes here as while the rate of adoption of new technologies may not have increased significantly the technologists are rapidly developing many solutions that are certain game changers as the industry seeks to optimize or, in some cases, replace the agri-food value chain entirely in the future.

Game Changers

How to sum up the take aways from this two day meeting? Let me just say that within the various categories of ag and food tech (Robotics, Gene Editing – no longer GMO, Biological Microbial Molecular Enhancers, IoT Sensors Controllers, Information Technology Imagery Analytics) there are some exciting new advancements that can clearly change the way that we produce food and deliver it to consumers sustainably.

The highlights for me were in the rapid development of disease or drought resistant varieties using what are referred to as “crispers” (CRISPR, CASP) that have the potential to insure that the next Irish potato blight famine never happens again. More importantly, scientists are developing what I would refer to as bio/microbial enhancers that drastically reduce the need for NPK simply by optimizing the plant itself. Improving the overall vigor of the plant also minimizes the need for pesticides, too.

We were introduced to new harvesting equipment that can literally handle the most difficult and delicate of all crops, strawberries, and also be adapted for a number of other fruit and vegetable labor intensive crops. There were people who are looking at the issue of creating new food products that are nutritionally healthy AND better tasting. It is not just about improving yields anymore.

Rethinking the Value Chain

One company is developing local fully automated greenhouses that can deliver food to local grocers in half the time and one tenth the distances traveled by the majority of our produce today. Think the Central and Salinas Valleys next door to Trader Joes in Chicago and New York.

It's the Integration

Everyone is still trying to figure out the key to unlocking the mystery of getting to the middle of that bell curve for adoption. Growers and trusted advisors are being deluged with a lot of point solutions but very little in the way of fully integrated and open systems. Without these solutions growers will not move from data to information to knowledge to AI that quickly make accurate decisions for those producers.

Gorillas in Our Midst

The agribusiness landscape is changing as we were introduced to Corteva Agriscience, formally Dow DuPont Pioneer. The company will be opening up some opportunities in promoting new farm management information systems in a recent startup acquisition. How this unfolds we shall see.

Lest I forget. There is a new player coming to the dining room table via the farm. Amazon. More on that later.