Tracking food through the supply chain used to be simple. Farmers would harvest the food from their fields, put it on a truck and transport it to their local market to be sold directly to end users. Under such an arrangement, farmers could easily vouch for the quality of their food because it had been in their possession throughout the process.
As farming has become more automated and factory farms are the dominant food producers, the food supply chain has stretched farther away from the fields than ever before. Knowing where food has come from and where it needs to go next is much more complex now, and food engineers need new technologies to ensure they understand where their inventory, materials and byproducts are throughout the transportation process.