Why Traceability is the Future of Agri Supply Chains.
Category: Agri
In India’s agri supply chains, conversations often revolve around price volatility, storage losses, and logistics bottlenecks. Yet one of the most pressing—and often invisible—gaps is traceability, especially at the sub-lot level. While end buyers, processors, and governments demand quality assurance, what is delivered today is largely bulk aggregation, with little ability to trace origins beyond a mandi or procurement center.
As global buyers, large domestic traders, and processors raise the bar for food safety, quality consistency, and sustainability, traceability is no longer optional—it is the future of agri supply chains.
The Missing Traceability in Numbers
The scale of fragmentation highlights the challenge. India has 146 million small and marginal farmers (over 86% of holdings, with average farm size below 1.1 hectares – Agriculture Census 2015–16). Procurement agencies like the Food Corporation of India (FCI) aggregated 26 million tonnes of wheat in 2023–24 from more than 4.5 million farmers—but procurement records exist only at mandi or center level, not at the farmer or sub-lot level.
In rice, more than 58 million tonnes are procured annually across states, yet once paddy enters a Primary Agricultural Cooperative Society (PACS) or mill, differentiation between Farmer A’s high-moisture lot and Farmer B’s superior-quality lot is lost. Similar issues persist in pulses and maize supply chains, where hundreds of small deliveries are blended at collection centers, erasing sub-lot identity.
This shows that traceability is missing exactly where it matters most—at the first point of aggregation.
Why Sub-Lot Traceability Matters
- Government Procurement & Distribution
- In the PDS and buffer stock system, when quality issues arise at depots, it is nearly impossible to trace back to the originating farmer cluster. Sub-lot traceability could enable accountability and guide targeted interventions, such as drying infrastructure in districts consistently supplying high-moisture grain.
- Domestic B2B Traders and Processors
- Flour mills, dal mills, and feed manufacturers demand consistent quality, yet bulk mandi lots are unpredictable. With traceability, traders could map quality data to micro-lots and selectively procure. For instance, a flour mill could source high-protein wheat from specific FPO clusters instead of accepting blended stocks.
- Export Compliance
- International buyers increasingly require residue-free, variety-specific, and sustainable-sourced commodities. Without sub-lot traceability, exporters risk rejections and reputational damage when consignments fail safety checks.
AgriQ: Digitising Procurement and Sub-Lot Traceability
This is where digital procurement solutions like AgriQ provide a breakthrough. AgriQ enables procurement teams to:
- Digitally register each farmer and link deliveries with geo-location and crop details.
- Capture quality parameters per sub-lot using rapid testing tools like EyePhy before aggregation.
- Tag and record quality at sub-lot , ensuring origin and quality records survive even after pooling.
- Enable hybrid (offline + online) workflows in rural aggregation centers where connectivity is patchy.
By introducing data-backed sub-lot traceability, AgriQ bridges the current accountability gap and makes procurement smarter, more transparent, and future-ready.
Conclusion
India’s agri supply chains are vast, scattered, and fragmented. But as demand for quality, safety, and sustainability rises, traceability will be the defining factor that transforms them. By capturing sub-lot data digitally at the first point of aggregation, governments can improve accountability, traders can reduce risks, processors can secure consistency, and farmers can be rewarded fairly for better produce.
The future of Indian agriculture lies not just in higher yields, but in traceable, trusted, and technology-enabled supply chains.
by AgriQ | Sep 15