Technology To The Rescue In Food Safety

Whether due to the complexity of the food supply chain, better reporting of incidents, or better forensics on the part of the emergency medical system, food security issues on a national scale appear to be more common in recent years.

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It seems a bit ironic that we now have precision agriculture tools that can pinpoint to the meter a chemical application in the field, but it typically takes weeks to identify a source of contamination. The question should be asked: “How could precision agriculture support food security?” Before answering this, it might be helpful to define food security, particularly from the perspective of produce moving through the food supply chain.

Safe And Sustainable, Field To Fork

Drawing from the literature, I would define food security as the “sustained production and distribution of safe and nutritious food in quantities and quality in order for people to have healthy lives.” This food security definition can be interpreted in a number of different ways. I will try to interpret it from the perspective of precision agriculture, first addressing the “sustainable production and distribution” phrase.

Variability in production and inequities in distribution threaten reliable, sustainable food supplies. While distribution is tied to infrastructure, economy, trade agreements, and national policy, variable production is the result of soil resources, weather patterns, and management practices.

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Historically, precision agriculture has been almost exclusively focused on the production space. The combination of geospatial monitoring, improved equipment capabilities, and the integration and presentation of data provided by information technology tools has resulted in better decision making in the field. With the greater adoption of today’s precision agriculture products, food security will only benefit from a more consistent performance at the point of production.

“Safe and nutritious food,” the second phrase in the food security definition, is just now beginning to be impacted by precision agriculture. Safe food can only be guaranteed when there is accountability. That is, transparent records as to the management practices, including applied materials, employed in field production must be available to all stakeholders in the food supply chain. The passing of these records from field to consumer provides a traceability of the management outcomes.

As-applied maps of material applications, bar-coded or radio frequency identification (RFID)-tagged produce, and online entries into record-keeping programs are good examples of precision agriculture products that support food chain traceability, with safe food as the end result. With accountability from the point of production, any downstream problems can quickly be traced back to an upstream source.

Nutritious food can also be served by traceability products. In analogous logic for preventing problems, the same precision agriculture tools and programs can confirm the claims of food ingredients.

Quantity And Quality

The third phrase in our food security definition has to do with “quantities and quality.” While the quantity and quality of food has always been measured in the supply chain for monetary evaluation, it is rarely linked back to production decision making. The inability to make backward links is especially true of quality.

There are several reasons for this shortcoming. First, produce from different farms is commonly mixed together as it moves through the supply chain to meet quantity demands. This mixing removes source identities. Second, produce from large-acreage operations has an inherent range of quality even if from a single farm. Third, handling and storage practices can change and in some cases degrade the quality of produce before it reaches its final destination.

Fourth, new and changing markets can redirect food quantities and challenge a quality rating.

In the end, it will be the continual improvement and integration of precision agriculture technology into the food supply chain that will help contribute to food security in this country and throughout the world.

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