Innovation in agri-tech is booming and is creating new opportunities for enhanced transparency and traceability trend in agriculture, especially in fresh produce supply chains. In the agricultural sector, transparency relates to the information that is provided by growers of fresh produce, whilst traceability relates to the ability for other parties to authenticate those products. According to a recent KPMG report, traceability is becoming increasingly more important in the agricultural sector, as it is vital for establishing trust, assuring quality and improving sustainability. Increased trust, greater quality assurance and improved sustainability creates positive outcomes for the entire fresh produce supply chain, including end-consumers, which helps to explain why technological investments in food traceability are expected to reach an estimated $19 billion by 2023.
What does agri-food traceability look like in practice? Traditionally, information about agricultural produce would be recorded manually by farm workers and was then shared with other parties of the supply chain, either through physical handbooks or via a basic computer system. Fast forward to 2022 and modern farms now equipped with sophisticated IoT networks and systems that are integrated vertically down the supply chain, talking to each other in real time, while the use of RFID cards and barcodes allows importers, wholesalers and retailers to track and authenticate consignments as they pass through the supply chain. At the retail level, with consumers becoming increasingly familiar with the use of QR codes during Covid-19, traceability might allow consumers to simply scan a QR code to identify the source of the fresh produce so that they can verify the sustainability credentials of the producers.
Blockchain technology presents another exciting avenue for potential transformation in the agricultural traceability space, with significant investment currently going into the research and testing of the potential applications of blockchain for supply chain traceability. The fundamentals of blockchain – distributed ledgers, immutable records, verifiable transactions and trustless systems – make it an almost perfect fit for the complex fresh produce supply chain. All parties of the supply chain would theoretically be able to record information on the blockchain and verify each previous record without having to have any direct contact with other parties. This presents a huge opportunity for provenance verification, food safety auditing and sustainability.
Overall, it’s clear that improvements in traceability could provide significant benefits for all parties of the supply chain. As interest in sustainability continues to grow, there will likely be substantial brand and pricing benefits for companies that are able to provide a transparent and verifiable supply chain too. Here at FruPro, we’re making great progress in improving traceability in the entire fresh produce supply chain. Our platform helps importers, wholesalers and retailers to gain assurance on quality and provenance through unique tracking codes on products that relate to the growers with clear information on the brand, variety and where the produce has come from.