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Blockchain – Essential for Fresh Produce Traceability
Blockchain for fresh produce traceability
Blockchain for fresh produce traceability
The Produce Traceability Initiative, was designed to help the Produce Industry maximize the effectiveness of current traceback procedures, while developing a standardized industry approach to enhance the speed and efficiency of traceability systems for the future. …and more! Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically. Soft Fruit Juice identify the pallets on a production order Zerya Protocol Leading growers, packers and shippers of fresh produce in the U.S. and Mexico use the solution for both item- and ca
Improve operational efficiencies with the blockchain Hyperledger, Fabric, Iroha, and Indy. Fruits is able to trace the history and the location of their exported fresh produce by means of recorded identifications. We hope that the ideas presented in this article lead to a fruitful resolution of the challenges that remain for produce supply chain members seeking to implement PTI in conjunction with RFID solutions.
She said while the countries are well positioned, there are aspects that could be improved. Fresh Produce Traceability and Inventory Management and Software Updates for October 2016. All trademarks/service marks referenced on this site are properties of their respective owners.
Season will work out the price of splits from the whole price of the product and can add on price uplifts for splitting. France intensifies controls to determine traceability of Spanish fruit 100% traceability across the industry will be accomplished much easier and with greater success if the industry agrees on a single standard for the information required to be tracked and shared during a trace-back.
This in an important development and will impact retailers both locally and internationally. SPAIN. Spanish fruit and vegetable producers have still not recovered from the “cucumber crisis” in the summer of 2011, which caused a sharp decline in exports. Working with all supply chain stakeholders including the local traders and smallholders on FFB traceability.
FarmSoft Agriculture & Fresh Produce Post Harvest Software, the best farm management software.
Reference: Fruit & vegetable packing systems for fresh produce supply chain management for wholesaler, exporter, importer, quality control, dispatch, sales and packing.
Will blockchain be the holy grail of fresh produce traceability?
In December 2016, so the story is told, Frank Yiannas went to a local Walmart store and picked up a package of sliced mangoes. Returning to the office, Yiannas, Walmart’s vice president of food safety, challenged his team to find out where the mangoes had come from, and set a timer. Six days, 18 hours and 26 minutes later, an answer came back.
BLOCKCHAIN FOR FRESH FOOD SUPPLY CHAINS – REALITY SETS IN?
Blockchain for Fresh Food Supply Chains – Reality Sets In?
When it comes to implementing blockchain for fresh food supply chains, has reality set in? Back in late 2017, blockchain was seen as a messiah, of sorts, for food safety and traceability. It seemed like it was hard to go a day without seeing an article in the press about this. Blockchain was going to solve all of our supply chain problems for freshness, traceability and food safety.
Has it?
Next steps
While excitement around blockchain is enormous, whether or not it will become the "Holy Grail" of traceability remains to seen. Roman Kuhar of Compac advises fresh produce growers and packing houses to align themselves with partners who understand the technology and who can help you implement it. He believes that consumer demand for transparency will drive innovation and that "packhouses and growers that adopt a blockchain driven traceability will become the gold standard for innovation and food safety."
Others tread cautiously. Harry Smit of Rabobank cautions that two prerequisites are required for companies to achieve success. "First, processes within companies, and between companies, have to become digitalized and standardized," he says. "Second, a broad participation of stakeholders along the value chain is required; otherwise the value of blockchain is lost." Nonetheless, Rabobank recommends that companies participate in more than one blockchain initiative while maintaining flexibility to switch to others.
Charlebois echoes the need for participation. "The most important challenge remains participation," he writes. "All parties must adopt the technology in order for it to work. In food distribution, not all companies are equal, and some can exercise their power more than others. A successful integration of the blockchain requires the engagement of all participating organizations." He states that further research is needed "before we get too excited."
Fresh produce on blockchain
While demand for fresh produce grows as people strive to eat healthier and look for more choice in their fruits and vegetables, the challenges around food safety and freshness persist. Across the industry’s highly complex, cross-border supply chain, challenges range from issues around the origins and quality of farm products to shrinkage and spoilage resulting from improper handling and storage.
How can IBM Food Trust help?
IBM Food Trust™ understands the challenges facing the fresh produce industry. That’s why we are dedicated to building trust and transparency and empowering seamless collaboration throughout the cross-border ecosystem with blockchain.
Learn more
Providing proof of origin and accelerated tracking
The Trace module enables end-to-end supply chain visibility, cutting the time needed to track a food source from days to seconds. Know the provenance of fruits and vegetables and their status to mitigate the spread of contamination and prevent waste in the case of a food borne illness outbreak.
Building consumer demand and brand trust
The Consumer module shares the journey of fresh produce. Connect shoppers to specific, permissioned information that helps influence buying decisions, such as origin, quality and sustainability practices.
Streamlining produce handling and reducing food waste
The Insights capabilities module provides near real-time supply chain data, including information on temperature and product movement. Leveraging blockchain and IoT technology, Hyper Insights enables better handling and transportation of perishable fruits and vegetables as well as dynamically optimizing inventory management.
Enabling reliable documentation across the supply chain
The Documents module allows participants to upload, manage, edit and share any documents along the supply chain. Improve information management, demonstrate organic and sustainability growth practices and show compliance with quality standards.
Use case
Enabling a global retail giant to trace leafy greens back to the farm
In 2018, a multistate outbreak of E coli-related illnesses linked to romaine lettuce started making headlines. Walmart had recently completed a food traceability pilot on the IBM Food Trust platform in which it reduced the time required to trace a box of mangos back to farm from 7 days to 2.2 seconds.
As a result of the successful pilot, the company sent a letter to all its leafy green suppliers asking them to join the IBM Food Trust-enabled Walmart Food Traceability Initiative. The goal was to have leafy green suppliers be able to instantaneously trace every product back to its farm, by production lot, within a year.
What Does Blockchain Mean for Fresh Produce?
Blockchain offers a range of benefits for the fresh produce industry. It promises greater transparency and traceability in supply chains; implicating improved productivity and greater food safety. By providing logistical insight, and increased control over produce; blockchain could help fresh produce businesses reduce costs, scale production, and invest in focused growth.
What is blockchain in fresh produce?
In short, blockchain is a digital platform that records transactions in a verifiable and permanent way. As a transaction occurs it is recorded on a shared ledger. The shared ledger is distributed across the entire ‘chain’ (of users), meaning the data is distributed and stored instantaneously across the network. This means that a transaction can be trusted as its details are verified by the network at large.
With blockchain, the movement of fresh produce is recorded at each hand-off. If, for example, a container of avocados is loaded for transit, the handler will log key data; such as location, time and provenance. As every handler enters this data, every item will have a full, traceable history with records at every point of its journey from farm to store. This data can be shared to designated participants in the blockchain and helps build consensus.
How will blockchain impact fresh produce businesses?
Blockchain will benefit growers, pickers, and packers by making them more efficient. For fresh produce businesses, this could mean speedier, more reliable supply chains – helping them to improve customer loyalty and maximize sales.
Blockchain
What It Is, What It Isn't, and What It Means for the Produce Industry
Ed Treacy, Vice President, Sustainability & Supply Chain Efficiencies for the International Fresh Produce Association. Image: MZMC
As is often the case with hot new technologies, there is an imbalance between the lofty hype surrounding blockchain and the low percentage of regular people who understand what it is.
A Wall Street Journal reporter earlier this year jokingly suggested cutting through the blockchain hype by changing every mention on the internet of the word "blockchain" into "multiple copies of giant Excel spreadsheet." Indeed, it is a useful, if oversimplified way of thinking about blockchain ledgers.
Importantly, "blockchain is not a specific software, it is a methodology for sharing data between trading partners," says Ed Treacy, Vice President, Sustainability & Supply Chain Efficiencies for IFPA (formerly PMA), who delivered a presentation called Exploring the Power of Blockchain Technology a PMA Fresh Connections: China conference in Shenzhen.
Chart describing Centralized vs. Distributed vs. Decentralized Blockchange
Another key difference between a blockchain record and, say, multiple Excel sheets: according to Treacy, blockchain is, "a unique type of ledger where you can't change the data and you can't delete the data: once it's there, it's there, and nobody else can change it."
Though far from buying into the idea that blockchain is the be-all and end-all new tool for companies to store and share data, Treacy nevertheless thinks the blockchain-based solutions will be adopted across a wide range of industries, and will be, "transformational for the grocery industry," including growers and suppliers of fresh produce.
"In the produce world, blockchain is a protocol for sharing information in a decentralized environment that enables the information to move securely through the supply chain at the same speed as the product," says Treacy. "Depending on how it's configured, you can authorize on certain parties to unlock your data. Everybody will have the data as part of the blockchain, because we want them to pass it on to the next link in the supply chain, but they won't necessarily be able to read it."
Blockchain can be used to add and automatically distribute data at each link in the supply chain, but can be tailored to control which parties have access to what data.
Blockchain can be used to add and automatically distribute data at each link in the supply chain, but can be tailored to control which parties have access to what data.
Blockchain solutions are already being deployed commercially by companies like HarvestMark (China), whose President, Dan Sun, presented alongside Treacy at Fresh Connections: China. For example, HarvestMark's parent company, Trimble, has used blockchain solutions in North America for managing shipping load assignment and contracting. According to Sun, "one carrier reduced contract management headcounts from 12 to 3 and increased revenue by $3.5 million through better matching capacity and demand."
Trimble Blockchain Application in production RFP to Engage Bid to shipper view to carrier view
But for the traceability applications where blockchain is mostly likely to find widespread use in the fresh produce industry, much of the technology is still in the pilot phase.
Treacy related how Walmart, in a pilot project with IBM, was able to use blockchain-based supply chain tracing to cut down the time needed to produce a complete record of the journey of a pack of pre-sliced mangoes from orchard in Mexico to cash register in the US: assembling the data went from almost a week down to 2.2 seconds. "If that was a food safety outbreak, a lot of people would have gotten sick in that six days and 22 hours," it took to trace the product prior to a blockchain solution being in place.
One male Blockchain team member from Walmart speaks with one female blockchain team member from walmart.
Members of Walmart's blockchain team. Image: Walmart.
IBM, a leading proponeMembers of Walmart's blockchain team. Image: Walmart.nt of commercial blockchain solutions, subsequently announced last year that it is partnering with major US grocery retailers including Walmart, Kroger and Wegmans, along with 10 major suppliers, including Driscoll's and Dole, to "apply blockchain to the food supply chain to improve food safety and ingredient transparency."
Treacy has joined into the process to represent the interests of fresh produce suppliers in the process: "We want to make sure that what [IBM] comes up with is going to work for most produce companies," not just the biggest suppliers who can afford large investments in enterprise software solutions. Additionally, Treacy hopes to shape blockchain solutions that will not force companies to completely change their processes: "Going forward, blockchain has to be complementary to existing business practices."
Other global pilot food blockchain projects highlighted by Treacy include JD.com working with an Australian beef exporter, Australian grain producers, and work being done by Alibaba, Microsoft and a startup named Ripe.io.
"Blockchain is not figured out yet," says Treacy. "In the world of produce, we're still figuring out the best way to use it where the value is, so it's a very exciting time to part of the process of forming and shaping" how blockchain will be applied to the fresh produce industry.
Radical transparency via blockchain technology offers food producers, distributors, and retailers detailed insights and data about fresh produce as it makes its way from seed to sale. The blockchain food value chain has the potential to deliver new benefits to the fresh food industry. With radical transparency:
How will block-chain impact fresh produce businesses?
Blockchain will benefit growers, pickers, and packers by making them more efficient. For fresh produce businesses, this could mean speedier, more reliable supply chains - helping them to improve customer loyalty and maximize sales.
“Fresh produce can spend 50% of its life in transit.”
- Logistics Bureau
The longer fresh produce spends in transit, the greater the risk of defects such as discoloration and food-browning. Block-chain could provide an answer.
Traceability
With access to data charting the journey of fresh produce, growers can utilize data stored on the block-chain to identify slow-moving items or produce that lays dormant before collection. Moreover, being able to map supply lines could open the door to potential pooling opportunities, or to previously unknown routes.
It will also allow suppliers to manage demand more effectively. The very same data could be manipulated to identify issues such as overstocking or stock-outs will help ensure resources are utilized optimally and reduce the likelihood of wasted journeys or unnecessary loads.
The technology will also reduce admin-overheads by automating documentation. Vital information - such as bill of lading, invoices and certificates - will be shared via the block-chain. This allows for quick hand-offs and decreases the likelihood of timely mistakes.
Ultimately, greater traceability and efficiency will make for quicker, more reliable supply chains - helping suppliers to improve relationships with retailers, and maximize profits.
With block-chain, suppliers are able to improve the safety and quality of produce.
Smart Contracts
While time and distance certainly affect the freshness of produce, variable conditions are another potential problem. Fresh goods are sensitive to temperature fluctuations and highly susceptible to contamination.
With block-chain, suppliers are able to implement smart contracts, which helps maximize freshness. A smart contract digitally facilitates, verifies, or enforces contract terms via the block-chain. Users can personalize a smart contract to suit their needs; a fresh food supplier might, for example, ascribe a temperature limit to fresh produce containers.
With an RFID sensor suppliers are able to track the temperature and humidity of conditions at each link in the supply chain. This gives suppliers access to historical data relaying conditions from an origin, through warehouses and carriers, all the way to the store.
With an RFID sensor, suppliers will be able to tell if a smart contract has been broken instantly. If, for example, the temperature of a container arrives in store above a prescribed temperature limit, suppliers will know and might penalize the previous carrier. This way, the root cause of defects can be identified and resolved quickly. This will help reduce the loss of produce as it moves through the supply chain.
blockchain fresh produce traceability
block-chain fresh produce traceability
The RFID sensor will make each handler accountable to the next, and an attached smart contract will ensure handlers comply with the requirements stipulated by growers. This helps decrease waste without any need for a costly enforcement strategy. The ability to maintain produce as it moves along the supply chain will improve the quality of goods, meaning suppliers generate more value and increase profits.
Block-chain will allow for greater logistical and operational capacity; enabling suppliers to build efficiency, trust, and reliability into the foundation of their business. With the fundamentals covered, fresh produce businesses can scale-up and maximize gains.