Trace Labs Joins Innovation Partnership for Integrity of Organic Food Supply Chains
Organic food production is one of the most sustainable agricultural practices. It focuses on providing healthy food, benefiting and protecting the environment, ensuring the well-being of farm animals, as well as promoting social and ecological fairness. These production practices bring many benefits and provide quality, healthy food with higher added value. But, because of inefficient food traceability systems currently in place, a lot of this value is lost both for farmers as primary producers as well as for consumers who have less certified organic food available to them.
Trace Labs Is Developing a Decentralized Farm-to-Fork Traceability System
The above is why Trace Labs has joined an innovation partnership working on establishing a decentralized farm-to-fork traceability system for organic food to support and boost organic food production. The first pilot is taking place in Slovenia with the hopes that the system will encourage other countries to follow suit.
The traceability system developed within the EIP-EKOPAKT partnership will ensure greater food safety and increase consumer trust in locally produced organic food. It will also help supply chain stakeholders optimize their production processes as well as support the development of new business models based on trusted data. The open-source decentralized OriginTrail protocol and blockchain technologies will ensure data integrity within the system.
Promoting Organic Food Production in Slovenia with Greater Transparency
Slovenia currently does not have an efficient traceability and marketing system for organic food. A lot of local, organically-produced food takes its journey through the supply chain as conventional food, losing its primary value.
The EKOPAKT traceability system is being developed to ensure better food safety and enable the better market positioning of organic food products. The system will provide digital tools for informing and educating consumers on the benefits of locally produced organic food — including greater sustainability — and supporting claims with trusted data exchange. At the same time, farmers and other supply chain stakeholders will be able to use the system to optimize their production and supply chain processes and develop new business models on top.
Promoting greater consumer awareness and building consumer trust, the system will work towards increasing the proportion of local organic food in the food supply chain in Slovenia and encouraging agricultural holdings to shift to organic farming.
Project Partners
The project is being coordinated by the Chamber of Agriculture and Forestry of Slovenia and connects partners from the agricultural and technology sectors and academia for cross-sectoral cooperation and maximum impact. The partners are working closely together on developing a versatile traceability system applicable beyond the pilot on which it will be tested.
OriginTrail: Powering Agri-Food Innovations Across Europe
EIP-EKOPAKT is one of several EU consortia working on agri-food innovations that the Trace Labs team is powering with OriginTrail technology. Others include:
SmartAgriHubs is a Europe-wide project aimed at the digital transformation of European agriculture through the fostering of an agricultural innovation ecosystem dedicated to excellence, sustainability, and success.
It brings together more than 160 partners.
Demeter is leading the digital transformation of Europe’s agri-food sector through the rapid adoption of advanced IoT technologies, data science, and smart farming, ensuring its long-term viability and sustainability.
It brings together 60 partners from 18 European countries.
The Food Safety Market (TheFSM) is developing an industrial data platform to give a digital boost to the way food certification takes place in Europe. It builds on the power of big data and state-of-the-art blockchain technologies to create an open and collaborative virtual environment that facilitates the exchange and connection of data between different food safety actors interested in sharing information that is critical to certification.
It brings together 11 partners from 8 EU countries.
EIP-EKOPAKT has received funding from the Slovenian Programme for Rural Development 2014–2020.
European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD): Europe investing in rural areas.
