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DAUNTLESS: NFC tags may bring fair prices to African farmers
A U.S. developer is raising money for a service that tracks produce from farm to supermarket shelf, where consumers can tap a label on a coffee bag to see which farm it came from and how it went to track.
Dauntless Software usesNFCMobile phones and tags to track farmers’ production, and raised $50,000 on Indiegogo for a pilot in Washington, U.S. that will be introduced to cocoa farms on Africa’s west coast in six months.
Farmers can attach NFC plastic tags to cocoa bags to identify farmers and track produce from harvest to processing.
This process helps ensure that the harvest is properly valued and that farmers are paid a fair price. Since some third world farmers are not educated, the field application will convey information through images and audio.
A video made by the team shows how the service will work:
“Our system is designed in such a way that it can be tracked from farm to consumption,” Dauntless CEO Clark Musser told NFC World+.
“Currently, we concentrate most of our strength at the front end of the supply chain rather than at the end, but as technology improves, we start to work more closely with all parts of any given supply chain, for the retail point and the end consumer. , the same data will be readily available.”
For coffee farmers, for example, “If a coffee supplier attaches our label to the packaging on the shelf, consumers will be able to trace the origin of the coffee, by flicking the label, to which farm and farmer it came from. where.”
“We like the potential for consumers to make choices based on the purity of coffee from a single origin rather than a blended batch, the potential to track farm or farmer, or even consumer preference for a particular crop.” added.
“The simplification of the interface will be complicated because food is produced in large batches from hundreds of farms, but as this problem becomes more realistic, we think we can fix it. It’s value-added, and stores are charging extra for single-origin food, and it’s going to be interesting.”
“Our current focus is on identifying the biggest gaps in automating food traceability and which comes first before it reaches the processing plant. Once we can prove our solution in this area, the supply chain downshift is a natural progression Next step.”
Farmers will need a smartphone or any NFC-enabled device to add information to the highly durable PVC labels, which will be attached to the bags of their products.
In addition to operating in some of the world’s most dangerous regions, the technology will allow farmers to get a fair price for their crops and enable companies to exclude middlemen from the supply chain, Musser said.
“Think about where the farmers come from. Some are from the most dangerous areas in the world. The farmers do all the work and are paid less than a dollar a day,” he said.
“Part of the problem is that when the farmer delivers the chocolate to the buyer, he doesn’t get paid for the amount he delivers. They get paid for the production that arrives at the port, so they put all the blame on the farmer and let the farmer To bear the losses caused by the insecurity of the supply chain.
“What we want to do is give the right to businesses that pay for the supply chain to say ‘we’re going to pay the farmers for every bag of crops they deliver’.
“The benefit of being traceable is that if three bags of crops disappear between stages C and D on the way, you know where to go to retrieve them. You can start monitoring those aspects. We’re already in talks with several different agricultural companies in Washington. My expectation is to work with them on a pilot in one to four different locations over the next 90 days.
“Then, once we’ve done that, we’ll move to the next stage, which is to start delivering things to countries in the third world, so in about 90 days the pilot will be up, running, and then we’ll be able to see it in about six months. Start spreading.”
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