My barcode with a straw please!

I wish to illustrate Ricardo Sánchez Villagrán’s blog where he presented the concept of traceability in agrifood marketing chains. I particularly appreciated his signature intertwined with a barcode.

For those who do not know what it is, a barcode is a graph in the form of bars and spaces; the graph corresponds exactly to a serie of numbers which forms a code. This numerical code allows the storage of information on the product or a batch unit of food products: exact description of the product, the place where it was produced, the dates and hours it went through all the steps of the production, processing and distribution chains, etc. The barcode can be recognized by scanners, which enable the automation of the logistics and distribution of the product: all the stakeholders who can read the barcode can access all the exact information on the product. Each barcode is unique; it is created and printed out by a machine.

With the globalization and industrialization of agrifood marketing chains, the barcode has become an information and communication tool (ICT) that is becoming more and more widespread to enable traceability of food products from the farm to the plate. The agricultural sector in developing countries is also opening up to exports and finds itself at the beginning of a long marketing chain where products are traced thanks to their barcodes. How can we enable this traceability up to the smallholder farms of these developing countries where the farmer may not be confident with reading and counting, and where he or she probably does not have a machine to create barcodes?

The Thai fresh produce production, processing and export firm Swift Co. Ltd has set up a system of coloured straws to extend the traceability of its products right back to its asparagus smallholder suppliers. When it first set up its traceability system, the barcodes from Swift were given to farmers’ groups as pieces of paper. But the small paper tabs did not last long with all the handling of the asparagus on the farm and during the processing steps. The company innovated by attaching its barcodes onto coloured straws. Each farmers’ group receives straws of the same colour, and a different colour from the neighbouring farmers’ group. Within a farmers’ group, each individual producer receives straws with a unique number containing three figures: for example, Ms Ratree always has number 007 and Mr Rien always has number 005.

The farmers produce organic asparagus and bring their harvest to the company’s collection centre already sorted in bundles of homogenous size. Each bundle of asparagus contains a coloured straw indicating the geographical origin of the product,with its barcode corresponding to the individual producer attached as a flag onto the straw. The coloured straw and its assorted barcode follow the asparagus batch all along the storage, sorting and assembly line. It is the Swift company that prints out the new barcode, which will enable its customers along the marketing chain to retreive the information on the product, its date and time of harvest and identification of the producer. Each asparagus bundle can thus be traced back to the plot of its producer. The sorting and assembly process of the asparagus is described with pictures here.

Therefore, Swift has managed to merge the barcode system – an intrinsical ICT tool – with simple technology embodied by coloured straws and elemental numbers so that the harvest of each individual smallholder producer may be identified within the grouped harvest of all the farmers who supply asparagus to the company. This system could be reproduced in other contexts where smallholder farmers’ groups supply a processing firm distributing to modern marketing chains.

Thanks to Swift Co. Ltd for sharing its traceability system and to Opal Suwunnamek from King Mongkut University of Technology Ladkrabang for the translation and layout of the traceability process picture file.