{"id":19094,"date":"2022-04-04T23:33:07","date_gmt":"2022-04-04T23:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2022\/04\/04\/does-it-matter-if-we-know-where-our-food-comes-from\/"},"modified":"2022-04-04T23:33:07","modified_gmt":"2022-04-04T23:33:07","slug":"does-it-matter-if-we-know-where-our-food-comes-from","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2022\/04\/04\/does-it-matter-if-we-know-where-our-food-comes-from\/","title":{"rendered":"Does it matter if we know where our food comes from?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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“My parents were coffee farmers, I’m a coffee farmer, I’ve known how to work with coffee since I was born,” says Faustin Mulomba from Bweremana in western Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo). <\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr Mulomba has spent most of his life growing coffee, but last year he was put in charge of a coffee washing station for the AMKA Cooperative, a group of more than 2,000 farmers near Lake Kivu.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Here, beans from farms across the region are stripped of the outer skin and pulp. They are washed, sorted and dried before being sent to the city for further processing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Up to 120,000 kg of coffee cherries pass through his station in a year, which corresponds to a little less than a container full of green coffee beans.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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While Mr. Mulomba’s family has a long history in coffee production, the introduction of new technology has changed his view of the business.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Now, when beans from its cooperative are sold to Nespresso, the company uses sophisticated data collection and storage methods \u2014 including blockchain technology \u2014 to track the beans as they travel from farm to customer.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Blockchain is a digital ledger or log of transactions. The information is distributed and stored in a network of users. The idea behind using the ledger is to make the information easy to verify but difficult to manipulate.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In practice, Mr. Mulomba uses a simple smartphone app to scan QR codes that give him information about a specific bag of coffee, such as weight and digestion dates. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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For Mr Mulomba, the new technology means he can see how much coffee has been produced at the cooperative, where the coffee is and if it has been handled properly. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“It’s a good tool because […] It allows us to measure all quantities in real time or have them delivered to the cooperative,” he says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Nespresso has partnered with Australian start-up OpenSC, a tech company specializing in food traceability. OpenSC has also worked with Austral Fisheries, using GPS (Global Positioning System) data and sensors on fishing boats to ensure vessels are not fishing in marine protected areas. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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CEO and co-founder Markus Mutz says this system is better than the alternative – manual spot checks by officials.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Why would you pursue something? [in the first place] unless there’s something to be proud of or valuable?” he explains.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Keeping continuous data from the production source can help improve the whole production process and avoid losses and bad practices.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But such tracing is not without its challenges. As with any process that requires a database, the quality of the information entered is critical to its success. For example, there can be connection problems and delays in data collection during the nightly coffee harvest in the DR Congo. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Arisbe Mendoza, Fairtrade International’s Director of Global Impact, says traceability technology opens up opportunities to monitor and support fair treatment and pay for workers throughout the supply chain. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The organization wants more traceability in international trade.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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However, she echoed Mr Mulomba’s concerns. Ms. Mendoza says: \u201cMy experience with some of the initiatives that we’ve had in the system is that technology isn’t the problem, it’s the capacity building that we need to do behind it to ensure that manufacturers and everyone in the supply chain use these tools will use, understand and be able to use it fully.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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She says growers and farmers need full access and use of data in the supply chain to negotiate prices, demonstrate compliance and access markets. But often this is not the case or the data rights are unclear. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cProducers may have access to information, but not necessarily the rights to it. We have to make sure they own the data, then they can use the data however they want.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Sara Eckhouse, chief executive of FoodShot Global, a food systems investment platform, says the inability to track food fuels consumer distrust and can even perpetuate poor labor practices or a lack of sustainability. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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However, she fears that the costs and logistical difficulties of traceability will end up being passed on to manufacturers. She also warns that adding marketing around product traceability could be more confusing than helpful for shoppers – who are already faced with a plethora of supposedly sustainable labels. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIf every company still has their own standards that they verify, and if there isn’t a uniform standard or the expectation that everyone meets a minimum, companies could still make claims like ‘blockchain verifies sustainably’, but what does that actually mean ?”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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More technology of business:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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    Shalini Unnikrishnan, is a Managing Director and Partner at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), which supports a variety of food tracking projects, including OpenSC. She says consumers are increasingly willing to change their grocery shopping habits for more sustainable products, including paying more money for certain items. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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    Ms Unnikrishnan adds that while there are many exciting small businesses and pilot projects throughout the so-called ‘digital farming’ sector, policy frameworks are needed to scale up these businesses. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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    “I think regulatory standards are really fundamental to making sure the changes happen at scale,” she says, because these give companies, farmers and buyers “a signal of what’s needed and a framework for standards.” <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    \n

    So what do customers think?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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    German management consultant Thomas Kunze is a coffee lover who likes to buy local beans on his international travels. Quality and procurement of interesting locations is important to him. He recently bought some limited edition coffee pods that have the traceability tool on them. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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    When Mr. Kunze scans the QR code on the package, he sees what area or cooperative his coffee comes from, including profiles of some of the farmers and whether they’ve been paid for their produce. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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    “It’s interesting, but not important,” he says of his brew’s journey. “The traceability is nice to see, but since I don’t know anything about the different locations, I would need more information about the steps and locations.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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    Back in DR Congo, Mr. Mulomba happily invites coffee drinkers to visit. “It is very important that consumers visit us, [then] Maybe they know our reality on the ground.” <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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