University of Florida Research Shows Potential of Farm to Fork Food Tracking

The University of Florida has unveiled results of testing it did using RFID to track strawberries from the field into retail stores - and the results are very interesting.

The Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences' Center for Food Distribution and Retailing at the university tracked strawberries beginning with their harvesting from fields in Florida and California to their delivery to stores in Illinois, Washington, Alabama and South Carolina.

The researchers first put picked strawberries in the field onto pallets that each had two RFID tags connected to temperature sensors, enabling them to capture environmental conditions from the start.

It turns out that strawberries picked and loaded onto trucks in relatively cool temperatures early in the morning have a longer shelf like than those picked or left out in the field before loading in warmer temperatures.

The temperatures in the trucks carrying the pallets to first stage processing centers were also tracked. As other studies have shown, the research found that temperatures inside a given refrigerated truck vary - sometimes significantly - within the trailer, information today that is rarely captured or used in the food industry.

By tracking this data at a pallet level from field to distribution center, a distribution company could calculate an expiration data for the strawberries on each pallet. That date would depend not only on how old the product is (based on when it was picked in the field) but also based on the temperatures it has experienced all along the journey. All things being equal, strawberries exposed to high temperatures will go bad faster than those that remained in cooler temperatures - sometimes much faster.

This would enable distributors to send strawberries to customer of a first expired, first out (FEFO) basis, rather than a first in, first out basis (FIFO) as is about universally used currently.

This and related approaches could dramatically reduce waste and spoilage - which is significant today - across the entire fruit and vegetable sector, the researchers say, and give consumers higher quality product.

"If you improve the efficiency of postharvest handling, you reduce waste and losses and that improves sustainability," said Jeffrey Brecht, director of the University of Florida research center. "Because, of course, if you ship something to market that's not going to end up being eaten by consumers, every single bit of input in growing it, harvesting, packing, cooling, shipping - everything is wasted."

The research was funded in part by a $155,000 grant from the Wal-Mart Foundation. Walmart has been working to reduce spoilage in the produce area for the last several years.