The Computerworld Honors Program
Honoring those who use Information Technology to benefit society
LOCATION:
Honolulu, HI, United States

YEAR:
2008

STATUS:
Laureate

CATEGORY:
Environment, Energy and Agriculture

NOMINATING COMPANY:
Motorola

ORGANIZATION:
Hawaii Farm Bureau Federation

PROJECT NAME:
Farm to Fork



Introductory Overview
The difficulty in tracing spinach and Taco Bell e-coli outbreaks to their source has cost innocent producers millions of dollars and threatened the health of thousands of consumers. In this 12 month project, the Hawaii Farm Bureau Federation and the Hawaii State Department of Agriculture are working with some of Hawaii’s largest and highest quality produce suppliers to pilot test the first state-level food traceability system in the country. This Internet accessible high-tech radio frequency identification device (RFID) based track and trace system is designed to increase the efficiency, accuracy and traceability of the state’s agricultural supply chain. The pilot group is shown in Appendix A. The project is also designed to serve as a model for the Department of Defense and other state agencies delivering produce to public and military outlets.

Deliverables for this project include:
1. An operational state-wide online produce traceability system.
2. Procedures, maintenance and training documents.
3. A final report on system status, objective attainment and associated costs

While a few Hawaiian farms and supply chain companies have some track and trace capabilities, no comprehensive food traceability program exists to protect the state food supply. This project is supported by a voluntary consortium of food supply chain members many of which are food suppliers for the state’s military installations. The traceability system will undergo a market and sustainability study and should have a positive impact on the environment since participants are dedicated to recycling shipping containers. Furthermore, a real-time traceability system may rapidly reduce the enormous health impact contaminated foods might have on consumers.

Project Objectives:
1: Introduce Hawaii’s food producer, processor, distributor and shipping supply chain players to high technology tagging and tracing capabilities using passive radio frequency identification devices (RFID).

2: Provide Seal of Quality (SOQ) and fresh produce buyers with the assurance that the product they buy is directly traceable to the Hawaiian farm or processor specified by DOD and DOA contracts

3: Assure that Hawaii’s farmers are supported through supply chain efficiency, accountability and security as a key competitive marketing strategy.

4: Provide the state’s farmers with a unifying, easy to use and cost effective means of collecting and preserving food quality and safety data.

5: Reduce the financial and health exposure to DOD and public retailers, farmers and the buying public in the event of a product recall.
The Importance of Technology
How did the technology you used contribute to this project and why was it important?
When applied to the problem of agricultural supply chain food traceability, RFID technology may provide the backbone for the development of a comprehensive real-time closed-loop food safety system.

Traceability, measurement, feedback and closed-loop control systems are commonly found in many modern manufacturing environments. Unfortunately, this basic quality control strategy is missing in the agricultural supply chain. With many governmental agencies focused on visual inspection as a food safety strategy, this project provides an opportunity to apply and test a group of potentially interdependent and interactive computer technologies to the control of one of this centuries most rapidly growing concerns: Food Safety.

Whether contamination of foodstuffs is intentional or accidental, food supply chains are currently without a quick means to identify and communicate defective or out of date foodstuffs. Such capabilities would normally be found in any world-class quality control system. As a result of this lack of measurement and control, current food traceability capabilities in the United States are, at best, antiquated, cumbersome, and ineffective in terms of preventing significant population exposures.

With RFID systems in place, product traceability and feedback loops using a variety of temperature, humidity or biological sensors may be established to measure product safety and quality status through flow points using a variety of computer based sensor technologies. As an example, since the use of water is common throughout food supply chain flows and since water is a common carrier of bacteriological contaminants, rapid and frequent measurement of water-borne bacteria levels. These measurement capabilities will enable RFID traceability system users to intercept, isolate, control and dispose contaminated food stuffs before such foodstuffs reach the consumer. This real-time closed-loop control system concept is similar to what is found in the common kitchen oven with a source of heat controlled by temperature sensors connected to controllers that turn the heat on or off in order to maintain an oven temperature within +/-5 degrees fahrenheit.




Benefits
Has your project helped those it was designed to help?   No

Has your project fundamentally changed how tasks are performed?   No

What new advantage or opportunity does your project provide to people?
While this project is in the early stages of implementation, it is too early to tell if the project has helped those it was designed to help or that it could fundamentally change how tasks are performed. Data will be collected over the next several months that will answer those questions.

The national proportion of food-borne illness is estimated at 76,000,000 cases per year in the United States(comprehensive statistics are included in Appendix B). Illnesses associated with vegetables and fruits rose from 1% in the 1970s to 12% in the 1990s. Salmonella, Escherichia coli O157:H7 and Shigella are the three most common microbial pathogens responsible for produce-related outbreaks in the U.S. Approximately 1.4 million cases of food-borne illnesses are caused by non-typhoidal Salmonella serovars every year. Infection with E. coli O157:H7 may result in bloody diarrhea and a life-threatening hemolytic uremic syndrome. Shigella has a low infectious dose and can cause severe bacillary dysentery and even death in children. In addition to these gram-negative pathogens, Listeria monocytogenes is another major concern in fresh produce. The gram-positive bacterium is widely distributed in nature and resistant to adverse environmental conditions such as refrigeration and dehydration.

Most Americans are acutely aware of the recent e-coli outbreaks in the food supply chain. Spinach, green onions, Taco Bell, carrots and juices are only a few of the publicly reported carriers in 2006. What most people are not aware of is the extent of these and similar problems that go unreported to the public and most are not traceable back to the source of the contamination. For instance the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) reported that for the calendar year through October 2006 there were 29 separate meat recalls across the country. http://www.fsis.usda.gov/FSIS_Recalls/Recall_Case_Archive/index.asp).

Such outbreaks do irreparable harm to farming, processor, and distributor businesses and to the marketing efforts established to support them. The intent of this pilot project is to develop a simple and functional food traceability system that has the software and hardware backbone capable of providing some levels of protection in many categories. Many European countries have established legal requirements for food traceability as a key component in their food quality and safety programs. These countries have long ago determined that a real-time RFID food traceability system will:

1. Help limit the population at risk in a bacteriological or bioterrorism outbreak
2. Reduce consumer anxiety
3. Minimize unnecessary expenditures of valuable public health resources
4. Help public health officials to determine potential causes of contamination
5. Lessen the economic burden on those operators not responsible for the problem
6. Give investigators clues that may lead to a specific region, packing facility, field
rather than an entire commodity group thus minimizing recall impact
7. Provide brand protection to growers and processors
8. Fulfill the Domestic Origin Verification for Products for Delivery to USDA and
DOD Purchase Programs
9. Provide data for growers, shippers and others to identifying and minimizing
microbial hazards and, as mentioned earlier, to
10. Create a feedback loop to improve product quality, condition and delivery


If possible, include an example of how the project has benefited a specific individual, enterprise or organization. Please include personal quotes from individuals who have directly benefited from your work.
Since the project is in the process of implementation, to date there have been no measurable benefits. However, in addition to the potential benefits listed above, we believe there are many business function benefits to many supply chain members. From an inventory control perspective, farmers, distribution centers and others will have real time visibility into the status of their inventories at numerous locations. This visibility will allow them to reallocate and redirect inventory to locations with demand characteristics instead of providing a slow sales location with overstock. This strategy will help to prevent stock-outs and will help improve inventory turns.

Inventory tracking and accuracy will be improved because of this visibility. Our conversations with volume and fast paced distribution centers indicates that they actually lose or cannot account for at least 10% of their inventory. Over the course of a year, 10% would easily wipe out a company's net profit. Unaccounted for inventory, when "lost", also means that the inventory will remain in coolers or at other locations for extended periods of time. These extended periods of time are translated into reduced shelf life. At the retail level, produce with shortened shelf life means that, although produce may appear fresh when placed on retail shelves, it will soon begin to show indications of deterioration and will not appeal to the consumer. Such spoiled food is recycled as pig food for local farmers at a loss to the retail outlet.

Originality
Is it the first, the only, the best or the most effective application of its kind?   First

What are the exceptional aspects of your project?
We consider this project to be exceptional for a number of reasons:

1. The association of state governments is ahead of the food safety curve in their demands for food traceability. While the federal government continues to ask the states to take the initiative, the states continue to ask the federal government for leadership and guiding legislation. Regardless of such governmental stalemating, the Hawaii State Department of Agriculture is committed to testing a variety of food safety strategies and has taken an unequival leadership role to move on the traceability and food safety challenges. In the case of this project, using RFID to begin the long process of developing a variable approach to food safety means that Hawaii is the first state to design and implement a state level food track and trace system connected to a centralized food safety system.

2. There are a number of other privately funded food track and trace projects underway across the country, but none of them is attempting to trace food across the entire food chain. The Hawaii project will track fresh produce from the farm at the time of harvest, through distribution and onto the retail outlet floor. It is important to note that farmers, distribution centers and retail chains are interested enough in RFID and food traceability to volunteer their people and resources to become part of the project - at their own expense. This fact indicates that there is likely an untapped level of growing demand in that supply chain. This demand is good for the overall computer industry.

3. RFID is an emerging technology that is currently too expensive for what might be considered mass implementation. As emerging technologies continue to be tested and implemented in limited situations, the demand for their capabilities slowly evolves. When demand evolves, even at high prices, more supplier companies become involved in developing newer approaches, newer technologies, and newer solutions to the problems encountered by the early players. These companies and their new solutions are generally also working to reduce the price of the technology and this price reduction, in turn, helps to fuel demand.

As an example, the project will also test "remaining shelf life" RFID Gen 2 enabled(temperature) tags that are placed on pallets at the farm and collect data as the produce travels throughout the supply chain. In one test case, we will track this produce into a restaurant. Imagine the day when a cook in a restaurant can scan such tags and know, rather than by only looking at the condition of produce, be able to review actual data regarding the warm and cold zones through which the produce has traveled.

Here in Hawaii, we anticipate that in the not to distant future, cell phones will be RFID enabled thus allowing small farmers to enter the food traceability arena at very low prices. Even the smallest farm will be able to tag and encode to meet RFID traceability requirements. Additionally, it is likely that consumers with near-field RFID enabled cell phones will also be able to read an RFID tag at the retail outlet and instantly determine the food origin.

Difficulty
What were the most important obstacles that had to be overcome in order for your work to be successful? Technical problems? Resources? Expertise? Organizational problems?
This project is federally funded. Funds from the Economic Development Alliance of Hawaii and the Federal-State Marketing Improvement Program have been used for the pilot.

The Economic Development Alliance of Hawaii (EDAH) is an umbrella organization of the four private non-profit statewide Economic Development Boards. EDAH oversees management of the Regional Economic Transition Assistance Hawaii II (RETA-H II) program. The RETA-H II program is funded by U.S.D.A. Cooperative Research Education and Extension Service and U.S. Army, Natick MA through a Cooperative Agreement with EDAH.

The Federal-State Marketing Improvement Program (FSMIP) provides matching funds to State Departments of Agriculture, State agricultural experiment stations, and other appropriate State agencies to assist in exploring new market opportunities for U.S. food and agricultural products, and to encourage research and innovation aimed at improving the efficiency and performance of the U.S. marketing system.

Most RFID suppliers are tuned to working from a purchase order that allows them to purchase hardware, develop software or plan integration activities. That process is the usual case when one company deals with another company. On the other hand, when a company deals with the government, the company is often expected to front the expenditures and be later reimbursed by the government. Suspicions and fears regarding payback arise in such cases. Such suspicions are heightened when the government agency imposes other "qualification" requirements and bidding processes on the supplier organization. These scenarios cause unanticipated delays.

From the perspective of the supplier, the delays were caused by the government bureaucracy. From the perspective of the government, the supplier often seems incapable of adjusting to new business environments. This inability to adjust means that the project will face internal resistance at the supplier level. Internal resistance is translated into a readjustment of company priorities that often place the pilot project down the list. Such project reprioritazion is a significant cause of delays.

Hawaii is state isolated by 2500 miles of ocean. The distance, time and money it takes to get here represent a barrier to the importation of new technology and the sales visits needed to introduce that technology to the state's businesses and organizations. To a great extent, getting suppliers to come to Hawaii is difficult because of this and the fact that, if marketing and sales personnel come here to work, their trips are often seen by coworkers and bosses as junkets.

Implementing an RFID system that theoretically goes from the farm to the retail outlet means that a great diversity of application environments will be encountered. The incoming back end of a store is a lot different than the shipping point of a farm. Finding power supplies and network connections and getting those resources to read points is certainly a challenge requiring the integrator and the farmer to work together. Often such problems are detrimental to participation, especially for pilot projects.

At the Hawaii State Department of Agriculture end, bringing suppliers, farmers, distribution center personnel, local IT resources and retail outlet personnel together to form a common bond as is required by the scope of an initial RFID enabled traceability project is challenging until the system lights up and produce begins to move.

In the agricultural world, as all supply chain members know, weather plays a significant role. The project has had farm participants washed out by rains and others drop out because of unanticipated delays.


Often the most innovative projects encounter the greatest resistance when they are originally proposed. If you had to fight for approval or funding, please provide a summary of the objections you faced and how you overcame them.
The greatest known obstacle to the planning or implementation of this project comes from personnel working in government positions. Government people are not generally known as innovators. Nor are they generally known to be particularly fond of private enterprise. Add these challenges to the fact that governments are, to some extent, influenced by unions. The result is that there is a lot of suspicion ("Can 'he' listen to our cell phone conversations with that RFID reader?") and fear surrounding such projects. Fear and suspicion are translated into rumors and resistance to participation and learning.

Success
Has your project achieved or exceeded its goals?   No

Is it fully operational?   No

How do you see your project's innovation benefiting other applications, organizations, or global communities?
Accompanying the "farm to fork" traceability envisioned by the project, the Department of Agriculture is developing an RFID lab. This lab will be open to the business and governmental community here in Hawaii. Visitors may handle RFID equipment, play with software, observe testing and meet with hardware, software, integrator and other suppliers at their discretion. We anticipate that the project will generate a significant amount of interest. With the lab in place and the system operational, our outreach and educational efforts are designed to attract new participants.

While there are a couple of RFID projects around the state, the publicity that the project has already generated and will continue to generate will help to attract and educate a state-wide audience about the benefits, issues and costs associated with RFID technology.

At the state level, the project and resulting system will provide other states with the capability and business contacts that will enable them to join with the Hawaii system or perhaps develop similar systems of their own. As with many issues in the health care industry, we anticipate that food safety and traceability will extend far beyond Hawaii's shores and become as important nationally as it is becomming internationally. When it comes to recalling or controlling accidentally or intentionally contaminated food, it is hard to beat the capabilities of real-time technology in terms of consumer protection.

On a broader scale the centralized system envisioned as part of this project will eventually allow consumers around the globe to read about the farm in Hawaii where the product they hold in their hands came from. And they will be able to do this at the push of a button for almost no cost to them.

How quickly has your targeted audience of users embraced your innovation? Or, how rapidly do you predict they will?
Based on last year's introductory "RFID Day" activities and the resulting newspaper and television coverage, we anticipate that we will be buried with demand for help and more information from the agricultural, government and business communities. We plan our second RFID Day in June of 2008. These activities will be followed by outreach activities designed to assure that all island groups (farm bureaus and economic development alliance councils) are working with the project to inform other potential users.
Digital/Visual Materials
The Program welcomes nominees to submit digital and visual images with their Case Study. We are currently only accepting .gif, .jpg and .xls files that are 1MB or smaller. The submission of these materials is not required; however, please note that a maximum of three files will be accepted per nominee. These files will be added to the end of your Case Study and will be labeled as "Appendix 1", "Appendix 2" or "Appendix 3." Finally, feel free to reference these images in the text of your Case Study by specifically referring to them as "Appendix 1", "Appendix 2" or "Appendix 3."

Currently Uploaded Appendices:
Appendix1.JPG
Appendix2.JPG