Farm to Table: Achieving Agricultural Supply Chain Security by Reducing Spoilage & Theft
In the era of globalized trade, the journey of food from farm to table spans vast distances, involving intricate processes and numerous stakeholders. This complex journey often obscures visibility, making it challenging to ensure food security and sustainability, especially in volatile supply chains or economic conditions. To address these challenges, innovative solutions like GPX Intelligence’s revolutionary tracking solutions offer the agricultural supply chain greater productivity, stability, and security by enhancing transparency at every step.
The Importance of Clarity and Visibility of Food System Logistics
Transparency of the food system is crucial for several reasons: it builds consumer trust, improves food safety, enhances supply chain efficiency, and supports sustainable practices. Greater transparency also means more people in the world that have access to the food they need, creating a more efficient food system with fewer thefts and less food waste.
In perishable freight shipping, 55% of shippers have experienced loss of time and resources to resolve issues related to lost, damaged, or stolen shipments, while 48% have faced loss of sales and revenue. Furthermore, 67% of companies shipping perishable food noted that their customers are most affected by complaints due to delays. These issues highlight the critical need for effective monitoring, alerts, collaboration, and communication to safeguard the integrity of shipments (Food Logistics).
Additionally, between 30% and 40% of the US food supply is wasted annually, with a significant portion occurring before the retail consumer level due to issues like poor storage and care during transportation and unnecessarily large orders from processing facilities and grocery stores. Because of a lack of supply chain transparency, about one-third of all food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted every year, amounting to 1.3 billion tons globally (2.6 trillion pounds) with monetary losses estimated at around $680 billion in industrialized countries and $310 billion in developing countries (Center for Nutrition Studies).
Finally, cargo theft remains a persistent threat to the supply chain, with food and beverage being among the categories of goods frequently targeted by criminals. The loss due to theft not only affects immediate supply but also has broader implications for market volatility and supply chain efficiency (SustainWorld).
Achieving transparency at scale is complex, involving the coordination of farmers, transporters, processors, distributors, and retailers. Each participant in the supply chain plays a pivotal role in the integrity of the final product that reaches consumers.
Challenges in Achieving Supply Chain Transparency
The journey from farm to table involves several stages, including farming/production, processing, transportation, and retail. Each stage faces unique challenges, such as logistics complexities, quality control, regulatory compliance, and environmental impact. These challenges are compounded by the need for real-time information sharing between stakeholders, often hampered by outdated systems and practices.
The tracking and digitization of food supply chain operations can lead to end-to-end real-time traceability. This not only enhances operational efficiency but also meets the growing demand for food supply. By digitizing equipment, inventory, and production operations, companies can provide the level of efficiency and sustainability that today’s consumers demand, significantly improving internal supply chain management and competitiveness (New Food Magazine).
New FDA Traceability Regulations: Coming 2026
The upcoming FDA food traceability regulations, set to be implemented in 2026, mark a significant step towards enhancing food safety in the United States. These new regulations aim to create a more robust and transparent system for tracking the journey of food products from their origin to the end consumer. By improving traceability, the FDA seeks to reduce the incidence of foodborne illnesses, ensure quicker response times during outbreaks, and boost consumer confidence in the food supply chain.
Under the new regulations, all entities involved in the production, processing, packing, and transportation of designated foods will be required to maintain detailed records. These records must capture critical tracking events (CTEs) and key data elements (KDEs) at every stage of the supply chain. This comprehensive data collection will enable rapid identification and isolation of contaminated products, thereby minimizing public health risks. The regulations will apply to a wide range of foods, including fruits, vegetables, seafood, dairy products, and ready-to-eat items, which have historically been associated with higher risks of contamination.
To comply with the new traceability requirements, farms and food businesses will need to adopt advanced tracking technologies and improve their data management practices. Technologies such as GPS tracking, blockchain, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices will play a crucial role in capturing and sharing traceability data in real-time. These innovations will not only facilitate compliance but also provide additional benefits, such as enhanced inventory management, reduced food waste, and greater operational efficiency.
Ways GPS Streamlines Farm Operations, Harvests
In the farm environment, GPX’s technology allows for the monitoring of produce conditions, ensuring that quality products proceed further down the supply chain. Farms benefit from GPX’s technology and data analytics to reduce loss at this critical stage, optimizing the logistics of getting fresh produce to processing facilities. Seed, grain, and other foods require specific temperatures and levels of humidity to ensure freshness for both farmers (for germination) and end-consumers.
Location intelligence can significantly streamline farm operations, enhancing overall efficiency and productivity. For equipment management, real-time tracking allows farmers to monitor the location and utilization of their machinery, ensuring that equipment is used optimally and maintenance schedules are adhered to, reducing downtime and extending the lifespan of valuable assets. In terms of harvest management, precise location data facilitates the coordination of harvesting activities, ensuring that crops are collected at peak ripeness and transported promptly to storage or processing facilities. This reduces spoilage and maximizes yield quality. Additionally, location intelligence can improve resource allocation by providing detailed insights into field conditions, enabling farmers to apply inputs like water, fertilizers, and pesticides more effectively and sustainably. By leveraging these capabilities, GPX’s solutions help farmers streamline their operations, reduce costs, and increase the profitability and sustainability of their agricultural practices.
Cut-to-cool efficiency is a specific operational area where tracking solutions excel, especially when combined with temperature and humidity tracking. The cut-to-cool process involves swiftly moving harvested produce from the field to cooling facilities to halt deterioration. Real-time tracking allows for precise monitoring and coordination of this process, ensuring that produce is cooled as quickly as possible. This rapid transition not only preserves the freshness, nutritional value, and shelf life of the products but also maximizes operational efficiency, potentially reducing labor costs and minimizing delays. Improving this critical cut-to-cool process depends on accurate location data, and is further supported by temperature tracking.
By offering real-time visibility at this stage of food production, GPX enables farmers and stakeholders to monitor the journey of food products with great accuracy. This visibility ensures that any issues, whether related to quality, safety, or delays, can be identified and addressed promptly.
Enhancing Harvest, Food Security With Location Intelligence
GPX Intelligence introduces a refreshing approach to addressing these challenges through its advanced tracking technology. By providing real-time visibility and control over the location and condition of food products, these solutions help ensure that goods reach their destinations without undue delays or spoilage. From a global perspective, this is particularly crucial in areas where political instability can disrupt transportation routes and schedules. With GPS as well as temperature and humidity tracking, supply chain managers can view the location of key shipments and reroute them swiftly to avoid certain corridors, minimizing the risk of loss and ensuring that food supplies remain uninterrupted.
Agricultural food products have seen their share of hijacking incidents rise to 10%, highlighting an increasing trend in targeting these goods (SustainProg) (Food & Drink International) (Retail Times). The thefts within the agricultural supply chain, including high-value items like honeybees, sushi-grade fish or roe, and nuts, have been a rising concern. These thefts significantly impact the agriculture and food industries, as these commodities are crucial for various products and services.
The theft of food in transit is often facilitated by the absence of tracking devices and anti-theft technologies. This ease of theft contrasts with higher-value commodities, yet the impact is profound, given these goods’ high demand and inflation-induced price increases. The thefts aren’t limited to smaller, less valuable items; there have been notable large-scale thefts, such as over 52 tons of olive oil in Greece and 200 hams in Spain, pointing to a broad spectrum of targets within the global food supply chain (Retail Times).
The nature of thefts has evolved, with cargo theft remaining notably high, shifting from facility thefts, to container or trailer thefts, or even on-farm theft. This change underlines the necessity for leveraging smart technology solutions to mitigate these risks. The highest rates of theft have been reported in Europe (37%) and North America (23%), with nearly 68% of thefts in 2023 affecting trucks. This variation in theft methods between regions underscores the complex nature of this issue, with different strategies required to combat these crimes effectively (Food & Drink International) (Retail Times).
Addressing these challenges requires a multifaceted approach, including the adoption of advanced tracking and security technologies, collaboration among stakeholders in the supply chain, and increased vigilance and preventive measures to protect these valuable agricultural commodities and ensure the integrity and sustainability of food supply chains.
Location Tracking In Food Processing and Packaging
During processing, GPX’s solutions facilitate the tracking of deliveries in and shipments out, ensuring that all food safety (such as temperature and humidity) standards continue to be met. Because processors will have greater visibility of the supply from supplying farms and their implementation of GPS and BLE tracking solutions, processors gain the ability to better forecast processing needs, reduce waste, and improve efficiency.
The efficiency of the food processing plant supply chain is significantly influenced by technology, especially in managing perishable goods. Technologies like GPS, Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE), and other IoT are widely implemented and have a profound impact on enhancing safety, traceability, speed, and automation within the perishable food supply chain. These technologies help ensure food quality by providing real-time visibility and reducing human errors in tracking and tracing perishable products (MDPI).
However, challenges remain in adapting these technologies comprehensively across the supply chain. During the COVID-19 pandemic, food-service distributors faced logistical bottlenecks and storage-space shortages due to sudden stops in outbound orders, while inbound orders from farmers and food-service producers continued. This highlighted the necessity for improved tracking technology and supply chain agility to better match supplies with outgoing orders and manage overcapacity issues in storage facilities and distribution networks (McKinsey & Company)
Implementing these technologies traditionally required an upfront investment in IT infrastructure, but GPX Intelligence now provides a lightweight option through mesh-networked BLE and GPS technologies. New technology applications offer substantial returns by reducing costs associated with manual errors and inefficiencies. It also opens up opportunities for flexibility and scalability, allowing more devices and individuals to be easily connected within the supply chain. The adoption of UAVs and autonomous vehicles within the food supply chain also points towards an evolving landscape where deliveries and monitoring of agricultural fields can be managed more efficiently and sustainably (MDPI) (MDPI).
How Tracking Enhances Food Distribution and Retail
As products move from processing facilities to grocery shelves, GPX’s mesh-networked bluetooth low-energy (BLE) accessories and GPS tracking solutions provide stakeholders with real-time updates on the status and location of bulk items and shipments, inside facilities and during the shipment process. This level of detail ensures that farmers, processors, and retailers can manage their inventories more effectively, reducing the risk of overstocking or shortages and ensuring that consumers have access to fresh, high-quality products.
The application of IoT in grocery bulk stock management presents numerous process improvements. Real-time data provided by IoT-based systems ensure that supply chain and logistics managers have the most current information about pending or arrived shipments, facilitating better decision-making regarding repurchase needs. This leads to more efficient grocery warehouse management logistics and the optimization of space usage within storage facilities (Analytics Steps) (MDPI).
However, the supply chain faces various types of disruptions that can be mitigated with better logistics & inventory management practices. Transportation delays, carrier issues, customs and compliance delays, and warehousing challenges are common problems that lead to logistics disruptions. Implementing advanced tracking and management technologies across the supply chain can help overcome these challenges by providing real-time data and insights, thereby enabling more responsive and agile supply chain operations (Deskera). The best part about this, is getting collaboration and supplier compliance couldn’t be easier with GPS and BLE tracking technologies. No heavy infrastructure is required at suppliers (such as is the case with large-scale RFID implementation). Start including tracking devices on returnable containers or reusable pallets, and greater visibility takes shape without relying on scans or human-centered processes.
IoT, Location Intelligence Solutions for Food Supply Chains
The journey from farm to table is fraught with challenges, but GPS and BLE tracking solutions offer a path to greater transparency, efficiency, and security. GPX Intelligence stands at the forefront of this transformation, providing the tools necessary to navigate the complexities of the global food supply chain. As we look to the future, the role of technology in ensuring the integrity and sustainability of our food systems will only grow, marking a new era in the agricultural, grocery, and food processing industries.
