How Food Traceability Will Change Your Understanding of Trustworthiness and Transparency

19 Mar How Food Traceability Will Change Your Understanding of Trustworthiness and Transparency

Do you really know what you eat? Learn how Food Traceability will change your understanding of trustworthiness and transparency.

Have you ever wondered that is the food you bought with the label pesticide-free and organic really healthy? According to Organic Materials Review Institute, there is a list of more than 40 pesticides allowed in organic production. Besides, there is no guarantee that they all are less harmful than other pesticides that are not allowed to be used. Wouldn’t it be better if you were able to see the production process of the food you bought, before buying it?

Maybe, you’ve never heard about or do not know well the concept of End-to-End Food Traceability. If you are a farmer who wants to increase one’s trustworthiness; or if you are a consumer who wants to know where the food is coming from, how it is grown and does it contain any harmful chemicals; you should know and learn more about this concept.

All over the world, Food Traceability is becoming more important day by day because consumers are getting more conscious about their food and they care more about transparency. It is important to be informed about every stage of food production for consumers because of the complexity of food supply chains, usage of different types of chemicals as pesticides, and various processes food gets through. Especially as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, trustworthiness and transparency is not an option but a necessity.

After talking about its necessity, what is End-to-End Food Traceability? Food traceability is the ability to track the forward movement of food products through supply chain segments and the ability to trace back the history, application, and/or location of that product. Historically, traceability is a business-to-business exchange of information that is largely opaque to the consumer. However, traceability is merging with transparency and becoming open to consumers. It is now commonly used by producers; because, with technological developments such as blockchain, traceability is easy to apply to the production process. Also, QR code technology makes it possible to use traceability solutions for consumers easily.

When we come to the traceability applications in agriculture, it can be said that traceability can reduce many of the agri-food sector’s most significant risks. As an example, these technologies can quickly identify and solve issues associated with food safety and food fraud by making it easier to track the route of a problem. Farmers can also optimize the usage of materials or resources, boosting the sustainability and cost-efficiency of the food supply chain.

According to the researches, it is estimated that farmers who transition to using digital technologies yield around $10 in benefits for every $1 spent. Besides, in the recent EIT Food Trust Report, which surveyed almost 20,000 consumers across 18 European countries, consumers voiced an increased demand for supply chain transparency from farm to fork, natural products, and better, more informative labeling. These show that if agrifood businesses were to scale their transparency efforts and implement digital technologies, they would be directly responding to consumer demands and likely increase trust in these businesses in the process.

With the Covid-19 pandemic, we started to live in a world where consumers are turning to more digital and online services, they are getting used to using technology such as QR codes while shopping. So, is now the time to be investing in digital agrifood technologies?

We know that integrating a new system and/or implementing new technology to a farm may concern farmers and producers. Without experienced solutions, traceability can be seen as a hard concept in the meaning of requirements of new technical and operational processes. In producers’ minds, digitalization and technological solutions are costly and complicated. But actually, it isn’t. You just need to work with a company that comes up with the best digital and customized solutions.

ForFarming offers a traceability solution that is easy to integrate, apply and use. Its traceability module includes measurement stations, sensors, and platforms to make it easy to track, follow and review all processes within the food production supply chain for producers and distributers. ForFarming automatically tracks, keeps and orders the information from the farm such as where the seeds are coming from, which farmer grows the plant, which conditions plants grew in, when they are harvested, and so on. With ForFarming, traceability becomes a solution that you can reach easily with an application on your phone, pc, and/or tablet.

We are aware of the concerns of consumers about the food they bought and we want to make traceability solutions easily available for them too. By the QR code technology ForFarming uses on packages, consumers can scan the code with their phones and see the information tracked from the plant growing process. This technology brings farmers and consumers together and increases trustworthiness and transparency. ForFarming’s traceability solution is not only for farmers or producers; when consumers feel the connection and trust the farmer or producer, they will trust the market or restaurant that they bought the food from.

Our world is changing fast. People are faced with unexpected global situations such as a pandemic, and their habits are evolving. Trustworthiness and transparency are a must in this evolving environment and their meanings are changing. We believe, End-to-End Food Traceability is one of the key instruments to build trust between consumers and producers and will be common all over the world soon.