Accumulation of farm data can aid safety, production

Interest in food safety from customers and regulators can expose farmers to additional questions, but it can also greatly benefit production decision-making, according to specialists in the field.

Some produce business analysts say they believe the rapid increase in available information can, when managed well, improve farm production in this generation as much as tractors and agricultural chemicals did in earlier times.

"It wasn't that long ago, running a processing plant in Salinas, that we collected a lot of information every day on pieces of paper, or a paper towel," said Bob Whitaker, Produce Marketing Association chief science and technology officer.

"We went from doing things by hand to having a sensor," he said. "We've seen another leap in the quality of the sensors. With all the information noise, we need to understand what the key things are we need to know."

Whitaker made his remarks during a discussion titled "Food Safety: Positioning Yourself as a Trusted Source" at the Produce Marketing Association Food Service Conference in Monterey.

"If you're going to use the technology effectively, you need to look at the areas where you know if you do not manage things well, you could have a problem with food safety," Whitaker said. "We need to be able to be predictive."

Traceability is already improving, speakers said, as end users demand to know where food was produced and how the cold chain has been managed in the path to the store.

"Food spoilage is a $2 trillion problem globally," said Lance Donny, CEO of Fresno-based OnFarm. "If we can (trace) a fish when it is caught, we can address that problem and reassure consumers on when it was caught and what temperature it has been at."

Donny, who has an information technology and security background, started OnFarm to offer growers a way to sort their vast and increasing farm-related information in a way that is easy to retrieve and understand.

"Farmers are going to move from using mechanization and fertilizer to improve production to improving efficiency by using more information," Donny said.

"Almost anything that is produced today has a sensor that is collecting data," he said. "What we see in ag is a huge opportunity to sense what is going on. I can see the day when we have sensors gathering information on every plant."

With the explosion of information, farmers would do well to partner with information technology specialists who can help them put it in a format that is useful, he said.

"If you don't have systems to capture that information and make sense of it, it becomes meaningless," Donny said. "Twenty years ago when we looked at a farm, there might be five data points; now when we look at a farm, there might be a million pieces of data a year. We can be more sustainable, improve our food safety and optimize our decision-making systems."

While data is making better growing decisions possible, speakers said, many among farmers' customers are also interested in this new information about farming practices.

"We see a growing interest throughout the supply chain in more information about what is happening at every stage in the supply chain," said Robert Stovicek, president of Primus Labs, a Santa Maria-based firm that provides food-safety testing.

As a side-effect of the added scrutiny, data will be generated that could benefit growers who can show they have reduced risk.

"An insurance broker should be an advocate for their client," Stovicek said, "if data shows that you should receive a price break on your insurance because your practices reduce food safety dangers."

End consumers are already more interested than before in farming practices, and some of them are willing to pay more if they like what they learn.

For example, buying local, sustainably produced food is very important at the sprawling Google Mountain View campus, according to Kyong Carroll, regional executive chef for Bon Appétit@Google.

"We do 72,000 meals a day at the Mountain View campus, and the people who are very interested in food that is local, sustainable or organic really speak up," Carroll said. "It is our responsibility to look at information for the consumers who do not speak up. We want to be sustainable and we want to be local."

Carroll said the food-service operation tries to procure produce from within 200 miles, and seafood from within 500 miles.

"Do the consumers know what we do? Some of them do, but we are responsible to the ones who don't. Our responsibility over where we get the food is very important," he said.

Nothing is more important in these purchasing decisions, Carroll said, than information about farm practices that could impact food safety.

"Our procurement department takes a good look at the data that shows the practices of the farmers who grow the products we bring in," he said. "Food safety is at the top of my mind every day."

(Bob Johnson is a reporter in Davis. He may be contacted at bjohn11135@aol.com.)