This milk is traceable.
And the Dairy farm doesn’t need blockchain to do it.
I’ve written about the issue of improving the traceability and transparency concerning the provenance of the food we eat and how blockchain — despite its advantages — may not be suitable for all participants (particularly the smaller ones) in our diverse food supply chains.
I’ve also written about how buying local can be a challenge for consumers as it hinges on how the product is labelled and what those labels are supposed to communicate to consumers.
That’s why some recent billboard advertising in Montreal caught my eye. The gloved hand reaching up from the bottom of the board clutching a carton of milk is pretty ordinary. And the messaging (not included in the image below) is basic — Nutrinor Nordic milk. Direct from Lac Saint-Jean. 100 % Traceable.
The ad hit three buttons for me — the claim the product was organic; that it was from a region in the province of Quebec (so, local); and it was apparently it was not just traceable, but ‘100%’ traceable.
I was intrigued enough to check it out.
The Nutrinor Cooperative is an odd beast of a business group. It has four different business lines:
- Agri-Food, which contains its various food producing brands, including the Nutrinor Dairy, but also two cheese producers, a charcuterie operation, a bakery and a bottled spring water label;
- Agriculture, in which they have a mill (feed and feed supplements), two plant hubs, two fertilizer plants, three grain centres, warehouses and stock farms (hog and chicken production);
- Energy, where its distributes heating fuel products and propane; and
- Hardware, where they own BMR, one of the largest independent hardware chains in the province.
Despite the odd mix of business lines, their strength is in dairy, as they’ve been a cooperative since 1967 in a bid to assist smaller dairy farms to find a steady buyer for their milk and to act as a counterweight to some of the larger dairy consolidators in the Province. All of their milk is produced by dairy farmers in the Lac Saint-Jean region of Quebec.
The traceability promise for their milk is easy to validate.
You need to simply scan a QR code with the camera of your smartphone. A link will pop up and by clicking on that, you arrive at a landing page where, once you’re past the story of the milk, you have some information to punch into a web form:
- the name of the product;
- the size of the carton;
- the level of milk-fat; and
- the expiry date of the carton in your hand.
For me, I purchased a couple of products — a litre of 2% organic milk, and two litres of 1% of the same type of milk.
For the 1 litre carton, the results I got back included:
- the cistern number
- the production location
- the dates when the cows were milked
- when the milk was received by the cooperative
- when the milk was officially ‘produced’
The landing page also has descriptions of the farms that contributed to that production run. For the example I used, there were four farms involved. If you wanted to dive deeper, you can click on a link for each Farm and get slightly more detail, such as what else they produce on their farm.
I was intrigued enough by this experiment to look around to see if other producers were doing something similar.
Three Farmers Foods is a Saskatoon-based grower of pulse crops (chickpeas, lentils and peas) that has turned to the production of snack foods based on the pulse crops it grows.
The company was literally started by three farmers and is run by two sisters of one of the founding farmers. The farmers made a decision in the early 2000’s to focus on sustainable forms of agriculture. Their focus on pulses reflects that philosophy as such crops are efficient in returning nitrogen to the soil, thereby reducing or eliminating the need for artificial fertilizer inputs. They also practice inter-cropping and cover-cropping to ensure that there is always root activity in the soil and the soil is replenished and stays active, biologically, even in the colder months of the year.
As part of their philosophy of practicing sustainable agriculture, they also believe that everyone should have wholesome food to eat, an understanding of where it comes from, and how it is made. This is where their commitment to traceability is anchored.
Three Farmers produces a line of snack products that is sold in more than 4,000 retailers across North America. They also produce Camelina Oil, a high smoke-point vegetable oil, based on a non-GMO oilseed, that is rich in Omegas 3, 6 and 9 as well as Vitamin E.
Every package of their roasted chickpeas, lentils and peas has a unique numerical code. If you put that code into their web tool, you’ll get a bunch of information about the product. The code they provide on their web site as an example is for one particular crop of Camelina oil:
- the date the Camelina oilseeds were planted;
- when date they were harvested;
- the growing conditions during the season (wet, dry, humid, rainy, etc.);
- the growing conditions during harvesting; and
- a google map showing exactly where the farm is located.
In addition, you also get the identity of the farmer who grew the crop, and a more detailed testimonial of where and how the oilseed was grown, the harvesting operation, the pressing and bottling of the final product and where. You also get a short portrait of the farmer who grew the product.
Both Nutrinor and Three Farmers have decided that making information about the product they sell includes more than just an ingredient list, and more than adherence to mandated labelling requirements.
They are both going the extra mile by providing additional, contextual information about the production methods in their products, right down to the farmer level.
It’s a reflection of a philosophical mind-set of the farmers from the get-go. A shift in methods to sell products to consumers where the consumer knows that the product is good for them, and is produced using methods that sustain the soil, are harvested ethically, and are good for the farmers. And the farmers are serious about sharing that information with their consumers.
While what both these organizations are doing is far from blockchain, or even the implementation of GS1 standards regarding traceability, it’s a good start at providing comfort for health-conscious consumers. They are implementing traceability solutions which they can afford and implement with the tools they have today (with minimal IT infrastructure), without having to invest large sums of capital into a blockchain system that, so far, remains out of reach for most farmers, let alone is nebulous on how data will be gathered to even feed such a system in the first place.
If nothing else, these examples should be inspirational for larger organization, such as the Dairy Farmers of Canada, who is currently wrestling with questions that have arisen around their production methods for Canadian butter.
The message they should take from these examples is: don’t wait for the next best thing. Do something now to address the transparency issues that have arisen, build on it through experience and interaction with consumers, and then migrate to more of a standards-based approach — perhaps using blockchain if appropriate — when it’s right and you know participating farmers have the economic wherewithal to participate.
They might also be inspired by what Maple Hills Creamery in New York has done. Grow their base of participating dairy farmers from two to over 150; guarantee that their cows are forage fed by creating (with credible third parties) a Certified Grass Fed Organic standard; adhere and enforce 10 grass-fed principles, which include the ability of third party organizations to conduct annual audits of the entire supply chain; be consistent and transparent with your consumers to build credibility in how you treat the animals, the quality of the product and traceability of the entire chain.
These examples show that, if there is a philosophical choice made at the organizational level — whether it be founding farmers or a whole organization — then concrete, credible steps can be taken.
Only then can a producer gain valued credibility in the eyes of the consumer and show that food can be produced in a more sustainable, ethical manner.
