SourceTrace & AgNext collaborate for food value chain traceability

Today, amidst lockdowns 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 the food worth billions 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. Digitization of such value chains towards making food safe, trackable, and of desired consumer quality needs to be accelerated and implemented faster 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, flavors 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 claims to solve the problem of quality, bringing the best of the technology world for agribusinesses. Using state of the art technologies in computer vision, spectroscopy and 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, optimize costs, provide traceability, sharpen and smoothen blockchains and most importantly produce excellent products of the highest quality for consumers and ensure fair trade practices with farmers.

To 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 corporations in each of the segments.

TraceNext for complete value chain traceability

By combining their solutions and signing an MoU, AgNext and SourceTrace have created a technology platform, TraceNext, that claims to 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 such as tracing food origin and chain of custody; monitoring ethical and sustainable practices used in growing the 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; and ensuring blockchain and fair trade practices in commodity supply chains.

As per FAO, the value of trade in food is US$ 1.6 trillion per year. The estimated cost of food safety incidents for the United States economy is around US $7 billion (approximately Rs 52,000 crore) per year. Similarly, food fraud and safety scandals have cost over US $ 8 billion (approximately Rs 60,000 crore) every year in APAC alone. The health, sustainability and economic impact of such a solution can not be underestimated.

According to the press statement, TraceNext claims to fill that gap, providing a seamless solution catered to agriculture and food businesses that they always desired but never had as a single platform, ensuring complete control over quality and guaranteed safe food their consumers.

Venkat Maroju, chief executive officer, 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, chief executive officer, 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 needed to provide 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.”