Today, amidst COVID-19 lockdown and growing pandemic, global food value chains stand disrupted across all commodities. Food safety has been a growing global concern that is only set to rise in this COVID world. It is in these times that it has become more imperative than ever, to ensure unadulterated and safe food across global food value chains.
As billions worth of food moves through the global food value chains, assessments and traceability of the food remain subjective or non-existent leading to losses in procurement, trade, storage, production and consumption.
Digitisation of such value chains towards making food safe, trackable and of desired consumer quality, needs to be accelerated and implemented at a much faster pace than ever.
SourceTrace is a globally leading name in traceability and has already implemented solutions across diverse sectors such as fruits and vegetables, organic cotton, vanilla, aquaculture, flavours and fragrances, spices, honey and more. Working across 28 countries since 2013, SourceTrace’s DATAGREEN platform helps companies track their produce from global locations across all stages while maintaining complete transparency and assurance of quality.
AgNext solves the problem of quality, bringing the best of the technology world for agribusinesses. Using state-of-art technologies in computer vision, spectroscopy and Internet-of-Things (IoT), AgNext has created the singular platform QUALIX, through which trade quality and safety parameters for multiple commodities could be assessed in a minute, enabling agribusinesses to leapfrog their procurement and operations processes, optimise costs, provide traceability, sharpen and smoothen blockchains and most importantly produce excellent products of highest quality for consumers and ensure fair-trade practices with farmers.
Helping businesses ensure the quality of food right from the farm-gates to the consumers, AgNext has partnered with key nodal institutions in multiple commodities and has also been working with leading corporates in each of the segments.
By combining their solutions and signing an MoU, AgNext and SourceTrace have created a technology platform, TraceNext, that can provide complete value chain traceability with an assurance of quality from the farm-gates to the consumer.
The benefits for such a platform as TraceNext, brings immense value to multiple commodity value chains, ensuring various aspects like
- Trace food origin and chain of custody
- Monitor ethical and sustainable practices used in growing food
- Complete value chain traceability – from farm to consumer
- Legal and compliance norms
- Instant quality testing on trade and safety parameters
- Instant trade decisions without any delays and dependencies
- Ensure blockchain and fair-trade practices in commodity supply chains
According to Food and Agriculture Organizations of the United Nations (FAO), the value of trade in food is US$ 1.6 trillion per year. The estimated cost of food safety incidents for the economy of the United States is around $7 billion per year. Similarly, food fraud and safety scandals have cost over $8 billion USD every year in Asia Pacific (APAC) alone. The health, sustainability and economic impact of such a solution can not be underestimated.
TraceNext fills that gap, providing a seamless solution catered to agriculture and food businesses, ensuring complete control over quality and guaranteeing safe food to their consumers.
Venkat Maroju, CEO, SourceTrace said, “In the coming years, traceability is going to be the most critical technology to ensure food safety. TraceNext is the only solution that can provide food businesses, regulatory bodies and consumers all the information they need to ensure food safety. It will also change how food businesses and consumers interact and what information is exchanged. We are looking at a complete transformation of the food ecosystem.”
Taranjeet Bhamra, CEO, AgNext said, “Leveraging the best of technologies and principles of agriculture practices, we are joining hands to solve the greatest needs of the times, solving issues for farmers, agribusinesses and consumers alike. TraceNext fills the exact gap that is needed for providing a one-stop seamless solution for food origin and quality for effective trade, procurement, production and consumption of food. The potential to transform value chains is limitless.”