Commodities have opportunity to achieve greater quality and safety enhancements through traceability.

June 4, 2019

2 Min Read
Centaur, IFT propose digitizing grains, cereals supply chain
artiemedvedev

Centaur Analytics Inc., a company creating the post-harvest quality chain for agricultural crops and food, working jointly with the Institute of Food Technologists' (IFT) Global Food Traceability Center, has released a special report for key decision-makers of the global agricultural commodity value chain for grains and cereals titled “Towards Traceable Flour — Digitizing the Grains & Cereals Supply Chain.” The report outlines how a digitized supply chain, using blockchain, is rapidly achievable and enables significant quality and safety enhancements driven by bringing traceability to the grain and cereal supply chains of the world.

Together with releasing the report, Centaur is working with OpenLedger Aps, a leading blockchain technology consultancy, to provide a version of its Internet-of-Crops platform that's coupled with blockchain technology, demonstrating the readiness to deliver these objectives to the grain and cereal supply chain.

“The global agricultural commodity value chain for grains and cereals has an opportunity to achieve an astounding level of quality and safety enhancements with traceability,” Centaur chief executive officer Dr. Sotiris Bantas said. “By applying mature technologies at scale, we show the opportunity to track the condition and history of every kernel of grain within a food product. This level of transparency and traceability brings the control, safety and quality that consumers want.” 

Topics covered in the report include:

  • Using traceability as a quality enabler for commodities stored and transported in bulk;

  • How remotely monitored storage facilities (on-farm silos and grain elevators) and transport vehicles can provide actionable post-harvest quality analytics;

  • Data frameworks to store traceability data in a distributed ledger, for transparency and authenticity;

  • Integrating and combining the latest technological advances — such as Internet of Things (IoT) devices, 5G networks and novel sensors and portable analyzers — to fully automate capturing traceable events in the supply chain, and

  • The existing pilot blockchain initiatives within the grain industry that demonstrate an opportunity for a next-generation, digital quality chain for monitoring the physical condition of every commodity and ingredient as well as events affecting food products.

Further, the report said the benefits that accrue for food companies using traceability are multiple, including that compliance to food safety requirements is more streamlined, brand loyalty is enhanced and supply chain management cost structures become leaner.

The IFT Global Food Traceability Center sees a rapid movement towards further digitizing the food supply chain, with grains, cereals and baking goods being among the verticals that stand to benefit.

“Previously, the ability to trace and track products on a real-time basis was limited by device capabilities, cost and network limitations,” the report noted. “With the rollout of inexpensive IoT devices, 5G telecommunications and traceability [information technology] solutions, the industry is incubating a new digital frontier where accountability and transparency are key aspects of a consumer’s decision-making process.”

The full report can be downloaded for free at www.centaur.ag/traceable-flour.

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