OPINIO
Trade4go
Jul 10th, 2024
Original content
Host: Benjamin Lategan-Global Market Analyst
Speakers: Bojan Mijatovic-Global Market Analyst
Lei Wang, Global Market Analyst
Kevin López, Assistant Manager, Colombia
Matheus Miranda - Backend Dept - AI Team
Agenda:
Tridge's May Webinar, "Digitizing Agriculture: A Guide to Enhancing Traceability, " explored current trends in digital traceability and shared insight into challenges that agricultural stakeholders face. The webinar covered the latest trends in digital traceability and provided valuable insights into the challenges faced by agricultural stakeholders. Tridge experts shared information on digital tools to help agribusinesses make informed decisions, facilitate trade, and enhance overall efficiency.
Source: Tridge
The first part of the presentation discussed the concept of digital traceability, which involves tracking and documenting the history, location, or application of an item, process, or system through documented identification. Digital traceability is beneficial for maintaining records of testing and inspection stages, ensuring product quality and compliance, and enhancing accountability across industries like aerospace, automotive, medical devices, and food processing.
The agri-food sector is increasingly focusing on transparency, safety, and sustainability, with digital traceability being a key component in this transformation.Companies must define the scope and goals to implement digital traceability in agribusiness. Agricultural stakeholders should also assess their current traceability systems, select the right digital tools and platforms, and integrate these tools into existing systems. Training staff and stakeholders on how to use these new digital tools effectively and monitor the system's performance is also essential. This approach leads to greater transparency, improved efficiency, and enhanced sustainability. Implementing traceability can reveal processes that are especially effective or could be improved, leading to operational efficiencies, cost reductions, and increased productivity. However, challenges in implementing digital traceability include the cost of implementation, data incompatibility, regulatory environment, technology development, supply chain efficiency, sustainability, consumer trust, data security, and integration with existing systems. Tridge, a global trade ecosystem in the food and agriculture industry, contributes to the sector's digitalization by providing a digital platform for agricultural trade and facilitating traceability and transparency.
The second part of the presentation revealed specific case studies, like Nestlé’s Traceability Program, Walmart's Food Traceability Initiative, and the European Union's (EU) Traceability Regulations, with special attention to Tridge Opinions regarding the implementation of the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) affecting beef products and commodities like palm oil originating from Indonesia and Malaysia.
In conclusion, increased consumer demand for detailed product information is crucial for enhanced transparency, traceability, and sustainability. Companies that meet this demand will gain a competitive edge. Technology will facilitate full product and supply chain transparency, making traceability standard. Tools allowing consumers to scan barcodes for product details are already in use and will advance as technology and data management become more accessible and affordable.
The presentation was supplemented by a panel discussion where panelists Lei Wang, Kevin López, and Matheus Miranda answered questions from host Benjamin Lategan. Wang discussed the main challenges agricultural stakeholders face in adopting digital traceability systems and how these can be overcome. He pointed out that agricultural stakeholders face challenges in adopting digital traceability systems due to high upfront costs, data privacy and security concerns, integration complexity, and compatibility issues with diverse products and production methods. Lopez concurred with Wang and added that the crucial points for traceability are visibility and tracking systems. Miranda concluded the inevitability of artificial intelligence (AI) driven solutions and the need to integrate different IT systems.
The second question of the panel discussion reviewed how governments and industry bodies support adopting digital traceability systems in agriculture. Miranda continued to answer and pointed out that investing in innovation (startups) and collaborating with the private sector is crucial. Kevin adhered to the necessity of government intervention in collecting data from all the stakeholders involved in the agricultural supply chain to boost the industry's competitiveness. At the same time, Wang concluded that training and education, along with data privacy concerns, as essential for building trust in digital traceability systems.
Lastly, all the speakers shared their perspectives on how digital traceability will evolve in the future, and what opportunities it presents for the agricultural industry.
Digital traceability is poised to evolve into more sophisticated and interconnected systems, leveraging blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. These advancements can offer real-time monitoring and tracking throughout the agricultural supply chain, enhancing transparency and accountability. By ensuring better traceability from farm to fork, digital traceability can improve food safety, sustainability, and market access. It also boosts supply chain efficiency, reduces food waste, and enables targeted responses to food fraud or disease outbreaks.
Embracing digital traceability holds the potential to drive positive transformation across the agricultural industry. It will play a crucial role in the supply chain, helping importers and exporters maintain solid relationships and enhance operations. By integrating technologies like AI, blockchain, and the Internet of Things, digital traceability can create value regarding sustainability and global food safety. These technologies will optimize existing systems and enable new opportunities, such as early pest detection, yield prediction, enhanced traceability through automation, advanced analytics, compliance facilitation, logistics optimization, and risk management. Generative AI may further unlock capabilities beyond current possibilities, driving innovation in the agricultural sector.
Click here to view the webinar recording, or click here to view the slides.
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