Keep it simple on ‘grain passports’

ARABLE MATTERS By Brian Henderson

WITH Black Friday and Cyber Monday now behind us, there’s a fair chance that you received a parcel delivery in recent days of something ordered on-line in what amounts to the ‘annual rush to beat the Christmas rush’.

That is, of course, provided a), the postal service wasn’t on strike; or b), the courier actually managed to find your farm and didn’t leave it at a neighbour’s door.

Regardless of these difficulties, the proliferation of on-line sellers such as Amazon (other web-based shopping sites are available – some of which even pay UK taxes) has seen a huge leap in the number of vans rocketing about the countryside delivering everything from clothes to books to groceries – and even farm equipment and machinery spares.

While there is probably a strong argument that such a blossoming in the career opportunities for the ‘man with a van’ might not be the best thing in the world for the environment, few – if any – ever burden you with paperwork nowadays, so at least a few trees are spared.

They do, almost to a man though, have some sort of electronic gizmo in the shape of a tablet, a phone or a hand-held device, complete with camera for recording the date, time and place of delivery and name of the person receiving the package.

While, like most people out there, I can’t really see the point in receiving an update from the delivery company informing you that ‘your package has now been delivered’ only a few seconds after it’s been placed in your sweaty little mitt, it is often handy to be able to track the whereabouts of a parcel.

Many such delivery services allow you to follow your package each step of the way throughout its journey – and you can tell which depot it’s got held up at, or find out the twohour gap in which ‘Gavin’ or ‘Barry’ will attempt to deliver your keenly anticipated parcel – regardless of whether it’s from Tractor Spares-RUs, or the saucy lingerie website you accidentally chanced upon!

But no matter what items you buy, the existence of these services does highlight the fact that paperless electronic tracking is commonplace and is now a fairly mature piece of technology which is robust enough in both form and function to be coped with by the average white van driver.

So, bearing this in mind, I’d have to admit that I was a wee bit surprised the other week when NFU Scotland declared that it was withdrawing its backing for an equivalent system for the cereal sector in the form of digital grain passports.

The fact that the announcement was made on the very day that cattle keepers were voicing their disappointment at the possibility of further delays to the introduction of EID eartags for their stock to Cab Sec Mairi Gougeon, at AgriScot, only compounded what might, at first, sight have looked like a Luddite approach from the cereal sector.

So, it has to be asked, ‘ by turning our backs on the planned introduction of electronic passports are we in danger of being left at the coo’s tail in the adoption of new technology stakes’?

For, as is the case with cattle EID, the debate on the introduction of these digital passports had been a long-standing one. Several earlier attempts at getting such a system – which would allow the speedy transfer of information between merchant and grower – have been stymied before they could get off the ground.

Interestingly, though, on previous occasions they had been torpedoed by the millers and merchants’ side rather than the growers, with claims that a central approach might jeopardise areas of commercial confidentiality (surely there couldn’t be any financial benefit from delaying the bad news that a load of grain has suffered major deductions before the next load leaves the farm, could there?)

Anyhoo, the benefits which such a system could offer have been highlighted to the sector since the AHDB completed its initial £400,000 investigation and feasibility study on the subject back in, if memory serves, 2017.

The most recent push – once again led by the AHDB – had publicised a cost benefit analysis which has been carried out showing that for every £1 spent on the technology by the industry, there would be a will be a return of £8.50.

The proposed approach would involve a three-year development and transition period with a budget of £2.1m – and an estimated spend of around £271k on annual operating cost for years 4-10.

Right from the start, though, those who wanted to pour cold water on the idea, had pointed to the very real possibility not only of connectivity issues, but also of the ability of farmers and lorry drivers to cope with the technical aspects. But surely things have moved on a bit since the idea was first mooted?

While some grain companies might have set up their own systems for offering faster feedback on the test results of loads of grain which have been delivered, a lot of them don’t live up to expectations – and I can’t help but feel that it would be a good idea if they all worked to a national standard, one to which growers had some input.

The big benefit, of course, would be that the electronic communications associated with digital passports could allow us to know the weights and results of quality tests of grain going into the store before another three lorries had been loaded for the same destination, thus saving us thousands of pounds if there were any problems.

It could also allow growers to contest any unexpected results while samples were still fresh and the grain still in the lorry.

From the ‘other side’, such a system would not only offer faster data flow but also the ability to offer a far greater degree of transparency and traceability, along with a guarantee of provenance on the produce which they handled.

But while all these many these benefits might be undeniable, there’s still a nagging doubt that the primrose path leading to electronic passports might not be the bed of roses we were being led to expect.

A closer look at what’s actually being proposed shows that, rather than making the information required for the e-passport as simple and straightforward as possible, it looked very like those drawing it up had succumbed to the dreaded curse of mission creep.

It didn’t require a huge amount of imagination to see that pretty soon the document would extend the list of questions well over and above those which were already somewhat questionable in the existing paper documents (for, as someone on one of the farming forum sites said, even if the last three loads hauled by the lorry had been asbestos, sewage sludge and uranium, how likely would it be that the haulier would own up and actually put it in writing?).

It was also a bit dispiriting to see that most of the sales pitch put forward for the move by the AHDB centred around the use of stickers and the printing of passports – neither of which are applicable to the Scottish industry where our SQC passports are supplied direct from a central body.

While taking to the digital world might eliminate the occasional difficulty with the interpretation of our sometimes clumsy handwriting, it would be a fair bet that while most folk in the industry have, during their school days, probably had a good grounding the three Rs, a substantial portion of the older generation at least won’t have had the same level of instruction on inputting complex information via a computer key board or, even worse, a tiny phone screen.

Although those assessing the cost benefits of the system were quite precise in their assertion that for every £1 invested in the changeover to a new digital system there would be an £8.50 benefit generated for the sector, there was less precision in highlighting who would actually glean this benefit.

It would also be fair to say that the industry’s experiences with the introduction of new computer systems hasn’t indicated that the move into the digital world will always be plain sailing and a degree of hesitancy is only natural.

No firm decision has yet been reached by the Cereal Liaison Committee, which represented all sectors of the grain trade on whether or not to push ahead with the move. However, the AHDB has stated that it would only fund the system if all groups of levy payers would benefit and were happy with such a move – but admitted that some of the concerns raised by NFU Scotland and others would need to be addressed in order to achieve this consensus.

Keeping it simple would be a good start …

‘A closer look at what’s actually being proposed shows that, rather than making the information required for the e-passport as simple and straightforward as possible, it looked very like those drawing it up had succumbed to the dreaded curse of mission creep’