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Traceability of Agricultural Products
2007-11-04
Grain and food companies worldwide are becoming increasingly anxious about their inability to trace where their product originates and the lack of a system to obtain traceable processing inputs. While many of these companies have the ability to maintain product identity after they receive it, limited work has been done to overcome the obstacle of maintaining a traceable product from the farm to the processor. Many companies claim to be developing traceable systems, however, most of these do not have a component to organize the traceable system starting at the farm. Instead, they are passively trying to get the producer to provide the production information and use various information technologies to facilitate collection and organization of the data. Without a direct connection to the farm, an organized system to aggregate the production information, and an educated producer who properly handles the crops, all the systems to trace product after the farm gate ultimately fail.
NGP Inc. is working with several partners, including FarmConnect, to designand establish a complete traceability system for the products typically grown/raised in the Region, such as cereal grains and legumes. This involves several complex elements. Such a system of tracing product from field-to-store shelf has many components beginning with the choice of seed, management during growth and harvest, management during storage, tracing during shipping to the processor, and finally, tracing to the store shelf.
The work is focused on five key areas of activity for establishing a traceability system. They are:
- Identification of all critical components of a field-to-store shelf food system;
- Identification of the critical sub-elements of each component of this system;
- Development of a strategy for implementing a test of a traceability system that includes each component and its sub-elements;
- Estimating the cost to implement a test traceability system (this test will most likely be in Northwest Minnesota); and,
- Seek the funding to conduct the work program.
The results of these efforts will allow the farmers in the Northern Great Plains region to proactively address a growing problem that threatens their current markets. This work also allows farmers to approach the market with a solution to the problem that will allow them to differentiate their product in the marketplace.
