ICT Update's List: standards

Fruiteq specializes in packing and exporting fresh mangoes from West Africa. They also engage in the production of other high quality fresh and dried fruits and vegetables. Fruiteq was founded to facilitate the export of mangoes from small producers in West Africa. Its main objective is to open up markets for rural people.

AgroFair is a company based in the Nehterlands since 1995. It uses a number of certifcation to ensure products sold overseas respect the sustainable commitment of the company. AgroFair is committed to only supply the most sustainable produce with the highest standards.Its quality system is based on the International Food-safety Standard certification (IFS Broker).Its products are Fairtrade and/or organic certified. Its producers are GlobalGap certified (or in the process of becoming certified).

While increasing access to well-functioning markets for high-value agricultural products is one key component of agricultural and economic development, an equally important component is ensuring that smallholder producers, particularly women, have the capacity to take advantage of this increased access. Strengthening the developing world's local and regional capacity to effectively engage in high-value agricultural markets depends on the availability of quality research and tools that allow policymakers to analyze agricultural markets and then use that analysis to enact country-specific policies that will help their most vulnerable producers achieve greater market access.

See Techtip of Issue 32

discerning diners with a penchant for spending a premium to know where food comes from are pushing DNA-traceable meat onto restaurant menus.
The technology - which allows meat to be traced from the farm to the fridge - has been used in Europe and other countries for decades, but has been slow to catch on in America. The technology can determine not only where the meat came from, but also whether it's organic or Angus. Workers take DNA samples at processing and other places along the supply chain. The samples are gathered to determine the specific animals each product came from. Information kept by farmers and others involved in the raising and processing of the animals can be added to give a more complete history.
DNA tracing also provides a faster way to identify the source of contaminated meat in the event of a recall, speeding the process from weeks or months to just hours.

Picarro is a private company that builds instruments for molecular tracking. MT is more reliable than conventionnal methods (RFID, tags, etc.). This page gives a good overview of the limitations of conventionnal tracking imethod and details how MT works.

HACCP stands for Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point HACCP is an internationally recognized, science-based, food safety system that is used to help ensure the manufacture of safe food products.
Food manufacturers that have implemented a HACCP system can assure consumers that food safety standards are respected. Similar to the Environmental managment system (EMS) logic, such internal system have to be audited independantly.
the HACCP Academy is such a company that builds HACCP systems and audits them.

"Located in Bridgetown, Barbados, the CARICOM Regional Organisation for Standards and Quality (CROSQ) is an Inter-Governmental Organisation among the fifteen Member States of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). It is the successor to the Caribbean Common Market Standards Council (CCMSC), and supports the CARICOM mandate in the expansion of intra-regional and extra-regional trade in goods and services.
CROSQ is the regional centre for promoting efficiency and competitive production in goods and services, through the process of standardization and the verification of quality. It is mandated to represent the interest of the region in international hemispheric standards work, to promote the harmonization of metrology systems and standards, and to increase the pace of development of regional standards for the sustainable production of goods and services in the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME), and the enhancement of social and economic development."

A private company from the UK. HAs over a hundrer years of experience in developing food tracking and standardisation tech. A good place to know more about what type of tech is made used in this business.

HarvestMark is a US company. It sells an intergrated solution for tracing food from field to fork. The system is gaining ground in south amrrica but no ACP countries seems to have adopted it. It has also developed an iPhone app for the customer who can use it to check and trace the food.

The portal on Value Chains for Development provides access to free, full-text electronic documents on pro-poor value chains. This information portal is also a unique entry point for all other Internet sources on the subject, including newsletters, discussion groups, websites, bibliographic databases, and directories of organizations and projects.
Pro-poor value chains

The value chain development approach aims at the analysis, design and facilitation of integrated supply chains that are pro-poor. Pro-poor chain development enhances the economic rent of poorer households - that is, the capacity of the poor to upgrade their position in the value chain so that they appropriate a greater share of the returns accruing from the chain. Chain development strategies employ innovative models of cooperation between value chain actors (producers, traders, processors, retailers), non-governmental organizations and public agencies. The dossier Value Chains for Development - an introduction provides more information on the theme of this portal.

The Caribbean Fine Cocoa Forum is a European Funded Project that will enhance cocoa production and training throughout the Caribbean. Partners and stakeholders in the Fine Cocoa Agro-industry across the Caribbean region will collaborate over the 3 calendar years (2010, 2011, 2012) to discuss and develop policy, research and practical field experience. Specific projects will be identified and sources of funding agreed to enact the applied research required to achieve the Forum’s objectives.

The project activities include:

Production of audio-visual programming and dissemination in the field (via extension workers) of best practice production and harvesting techniques for the cocoa farmers
Design, Production, installation and commissioning of hybrid solar-powered dryers in Trinidad and Jamaica to use as substitutes to the oil-fired dryers. Retro-fitting of a dryer in Jamaica to use LPG/LNG
Implementation of digital photo data capture and relay via mobile (cellular) telephony to capture, monitor and combat spread of diseases amongst cocoa fields in the Caribbean
Implementation of HAACP Certification procedures in Jamaica and Trinidad fermentaries with piloting of irradiation treatment process
Commercial development of value-added cocoa products for sale to the tourist (and eco-tourist) markets across the Caribbean islands on a test-marketing basis.
Demonstration/training of use of cocoa by-products to the small farmers on a pan-Caribbean basis

http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/scforum/documents/GhanaSheaCase.pdf
http://www.ica.coop/africa/2010-ruralfinance/shea-valuechain.pdf

SAP initiated a partnership with PlaNet Finance Advisory Services (PF AS), to identify and design a financially, socially and environmentally sustainable program targeting the base of the pyramid and connecting it to the global value chain.
The aim of this initiative is to make value chains more inclusive via microfinancing, education and information technology. The value chain where the program could have the largest impact was identified as the shea sector in Ghana.
ICT:
SAP has contributed with its core expertise to support the shea program. First, they developed a website (www.starshea.com) which markets SSN products to buyers around the world. Second, they developed a software tool called Rural Market Connection (RMC), a specialized order fulfillment and management package, which enables women’s groups to manage orders from buyers. Women are sent SMS text messages via RMC regarding logistics information. The women also receive SMS text messages regarding market prices from Esoko, a market information exchange that is managed on the internet and integrates information with mobile phones. Third, SAP developed Microloan Management, a software system that enables field credit officers to monitor their loan portfolios and calculate portfolio aging at a glance.

The TraceFood Wiki aims to make traceability possible through a whole supply chain, preferably in electronic form. The goal is to ensure that; food items and processes are identified in a uniform way, that a common electronic language is available for interchange of traceability information, and that a common Good Traceability Practice underlie all implementations.The wiki was developed to help people implement traceability in their business, and as an arena where people can come together and discuss their different views and experiences on traceability.

Export Alert! is a free pilot service that automatically e-mails companies when governments in any of 134 World Trade Organization (WTO) member countries - including Canada - are proposing changes to the rules that govern products and services. The Standards Council is believed to be the first organization in the world to use this technology to help companies take advantage of trade information made available through the WTO. For canadian nationals only. This notification system is unique iin the world and could serve as an example for exporting countries. Not possible to know if agri-products are covered in the alerts.
The Service enables users to know about changing product requirements in global markets before they become law; grants access to the complete texts of the draft regulatory measures; and provides clients with the opportunity to voice their concerns regarding the measures. These concerns are taken into consideration as the regulations are finalized.

Traceability-T Ltd is a non-profit company that supports and facilitate small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to access local and international lucrative markets of high value food and feed commodities. They build SMEs' capacity to improve product competitiveness to comply with national and international food standards and trade regulations.

A paper by the Hydro and Agro Informatics Institute, National Science and Technology Development Agency, Thailand, explaining how IT has been applied to the management of food safety in the chicken industry.
Thailand (in 2007) has developed a "GIS-MIS Network System" tech that is now used to analyse livestock system in the country, and to trace back products. This article explains how that systems works and details the type of data used as input.

This system is called the "Application For Agricultural Methodological Analysis" (AFAMA), an Internet-based system for managing the agricultural production process. Using Internet-enabled mobile phones, farmers can easily input records about farm activities and material applications during outdoor work. In order to identify individual products on the distribution process more efficiently, we applied small RFID tags with unique ID numbers. Each RFID tag on a product relates to its production data on the AFAMA database. In the distribution process, workers read the RFID tags using RFID readers, and transit records of the products are inputted to a database. Field experiments of this integrated traceability system were performed on fruit and vegetable products, and information disclosure about them were well received by consumers.

The USAID brief focuses on successful applications of ICT in the agricultural sector in developping countries. Summaries of these success storier explains how ICT has benefited the management of supply chains for farming entreprises. Examples come from India and Africa, among other regions.
Using ICT to manage distribution and supply chains can increase efficiency and predictability and reduce waste in value chains and have positive impacts on all market actors. ICT applications presented in this paper are divided into the following categories: 1) applications that assist in the management of supplier networks, 2) applications that facilitate traceability, and 3) applications that assist input supply companies to manage their distribution networks.

Standards Map is the web-based portal of ITC's Trade for Sustainable Development (T4SD) programme and a partnership-based effort to enhance transparency on voluntary standards and to increase opportunities for sustainable production and trade.
Standards Map is the main output of the International Trade Centre T4SD programme. It is a web-based tool which centralises, organises and disseminates information on private standards and related research results to strengthen the capacity of producers, exporters and buyers to participate in more sustainable production and trade.