Digital traceability for farming cooperatives in the Campo de Cartagena

What does traceability require?

EU food law, Regulation (EC) 178/2002, requires food businesses to know who supplied each product and who they delivered it to: one step back and one step forward. Many buyers and certifications, such as GLOBALG.A.P., also ask for more detailed records: plot, dates, treatments and lab tests.

In Spain, Royal Decree 1054/2022 also regulates the digital farm logbook, which moves field records into a digital format. In a cooperative all of this multiplies: many members, many plots and lots that get mixed in the warehouse.

Where do paper and spreadsheets fall short?

• Field data arrives late, handwritten, and has to be typed up.
• A lot mixes harvests from several members and tracing its origin takes time.
• Every buyer asks for the information in a different format.
• An audit or an incident means digging through papers from several seasons.

What does a traceability platform do?

It brings together what is scattered today: each member's plots on the map, what is harvested and when, the lots formed in the warehouse and the shipments to each buyer. With that, the origin of any box can be looked up in seconds.

• Plots drawn on the aerial photo, with their crop and status.
• Harvests and lots recorded from a phone, in the field or the warehouse.
• A QR code per box or pallet that opens the lot's record.
• A public page for the buyer, in their own language.
• Exports and documents ready for audits and buyers.

Does everything have to change at once?

No. The usual approach is to start with what takes the most time, typically lots and shipments, and connect the field afterwards. If the cooperative already uses management or field-logbook software, the platform can read its data instead of replacing it.

An example: Lotea

Lotea is a concept project we built to show what this platform could look like for an exporting cooperative in the Campo de Cartagena: real plots on the IGN aerial photo, harvests, lots, irrigation probes and a QR page for every box in Spanish, English and German. You can see it working in the case study.