STiR coffee and tea magazine

46 STiR coffee and tea / Issue 6, 2017 (December / January) T racking a seed from farm to cup seems simple. But documenting every step from a single grower to proces- sor and exporter, and then onto a roaster, retailer and consumer, is quite complicated. Now consider blends that mix coffee from hundreds of growers from multiple origins in dif- fering ratios for recipes that vary by season. With so many players and variables, it is no wonder that essential details from origin get lost in the shuffle. Traceability presents several challenges starting with the fact that approxi- mately 80% of the world's coffee is grown by small holders. Many struggle to make ends meet. Some are illiterate. Few know how to price their beans, let alone fully understand supply chain markup or what consumers pay, or the coffee's final destination. "Most coffee becomes anonymous somewhere in the supply chain, the question is 'Where does it happen?' and the answer is that it often happens very early on," said Daan DeVries, innovation and technology director at UTZ Certified. There is a huge informal economy within the coffee sector most of which is cash based, he explains. This opacity makes it difficult to trace the journey of the bean right from the start. On a positive note, the expanding special- ity coffee segment has increased interest in traceability. Specialty roasters actively seek beans from single origin, and often a single farm, to ensure a consistent, quality product. Health and safety and sustainability are also concerns eased by traceability. In fact, companies that decide not to put transparent prac- tices into place face an inherent risk. "There is a defensive strategy to traceability," said DeVries. "In many sectors, it is tied to food safety, for example in tea, there has been an increased concern with pesticides. Being able to trace the product back to its source, and the methods used in growing it, could alleviate these concerns," he said. Transparency depends on the ability to trace accurate infor- mation as it is relayed down the supply chain. Obtaining and communicating accurate details is challenging, particularly when the players rely on manual reporting. "There are many different layers of transparency and risks as- sociated with each layer," said Peter Roberts, academic director, Transparent Trade Coffee (TTC). "Just having the information and putting it into the market is not enough, there needs to be the social structures in place to support the information," he said. The supply chain is particularly challenging, with so many hands touching the transaction, and potentially manipulating the information. This is why traceability software has proven help- ful. "Given our experience with emerging economies, we have found that people are more trusting of the technology than the human factor," said Allyson Quijano, director, partnerships and business development, Bext360. Recognizing this struggle, Bext360 developed a cryptocur- rency platform that immediately pays producers on delivery and fully documents transactions digitally on a platform that makes this information discoverable along the supply chain. This con- tinuously growing list of records, called blocks, forms a block- chain that is far superior to existing, antiquated record keeping based on bills of lading, according to Quijano. Farmers who bring their coffee to the Bext360 collection center load their beans into a sorter that analyzes the quality of the coffee cherry. This information forms the first block. This data provides im- mediate feedback to farmers who can either accept or reject the price associated with that grade of coffee. "Recently there's been a lot of hope around the concept of block chain technology," said DeVries. "But these systems don't emerge by themselves, there are a lot of things that need to be done for the system to work." One of the goals for UTZ is to increase the digitization within the first mile so as to better understand the region where the coffee is sourced. Co-operatives and traders are in- corporating digital systems for traceability for the benefit of roasters who may want to know the source country, region, cooperative, a washing station, and ideally the farmer as well. Al Whitehead, senior consultant at FarmSoft, says that when Trace and Track By Anne-Marie Hardie Coffee is most likely to become anonymous near origin

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