It’s only a few months, and the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has developed into a global public health crisis, with more than 212 countries and regions affected. To date, about 3.7million people have tested positive for the virus, and more than 258,800 deaths have been counted. The covid-19 pandemic not only affects the everyday lives of people but also significantly impacts economies around the globe. The pandemic presents a devastating demand and supply shock that affects international trade flows and production chains. 

Just like other sectors, no part of the coffee chain has been spared by COVID-19. Even though governments are implementing policies to save lives and cushion the economy, a global economic downturn in the sector is unfolding. While earlier reports primarily focused on the dramatic impact on cafes, roasters, and baristas, the green coffee supply side is an equally vital part of the emerging picture. Coffee is an agricultural product consumed globally and uses freight shipping to cross many borders, sustaining the lives of millions of coffee growers and producers. 

As has been observed in the recent past, COVID-19 has, in the short term, led to decreased out-of-home consumption of coffee as many countries began adopting a full or partial lockdown. Offices, restaurants, and coffee shops remain closed in a bid to reduce the spread of the virus. 

While this is the case, data from the retailers and supermarkets shows that panic buying and stockpiling in some countries led to increased consumer demand. However, this is not likely to have a long-term effect on consumption. Naturally, following a spike in demand, there will be significantly less demand in the coming weeks or months as people draw down stocks kept at home. 

No doubt, shipments have been delayed by a limited number of available containers, while ports have had to reduce their staff to comply with social distancing rules. This has consequently led to slow overland transportation in both producing and consuming regions. In response to these delays, especially as COVID-19 intensifies in countries producing coffee, companies are stockpiling, thus leading to high market prices. 

Covid-19 pandemic shows the coffee supply chain needs to embrace new technologies. Here is how technology can help the coffee supply chain/international trade amid the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Use of autonomous robots

Autonomous robots are gadgets that are programmed to perform tasks usually done by a human with little to no human intervention or interactions. Essentially, autonomous robots can recognize and learn from their surroundings and make decisions independently. Autonomous robots can be used in coffee-manufacturing plants in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic to replace reduced staff. It can also be in ports where the staff has been reduced in compliance with social distancing rules. 

Use of technology to enhance communication

In the wake of a coronavirus disease pandemic, more and more lockdowns are being announced each day. As the situation evolves, coffee supply chain stakeholders can take advantage of various communication tools to stay in touch until normalcy returns. This may mean stakeholders try entirely new ways to reach out to each other, for instance, using zoom or Webex to conduct virtual meetings. 

Use of agricultural technologies and digital agriculture solutions

Using agricultural technologies, especially digital agriculture solutions, provides a wide range of outstanding opportunities to address the effects of COVID-19 on the coffee supply chain. Drones can be used to address labor constraints and reduce human contact amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Drones and other digital extension tools can help farmers adopt labor and input-saving practices. Digital agriculture solutions that link coffee farmers to buyers and logistics services could help reduce the effects of coronavirus disease on the supply chain. 

Coronavirus disease pandemic has presented the world with an opportunity to rethink action to address its effects on the coffee supply chain and international trade. The ideas, as mentioned earlier, should only act as the foundation for a more robust discussion. By collaborating and bringing ideas together, the global community has a much stronger chance to bounce back from the effects of COVID-19 on the global coffee supply chain. 

Agriculture is a complicated business with considerations like soil and crop types, topography, climate and how to minimize inputs while maximizing yields.  Yet a one-size-fits-all approach is still frequently used in planting. Watching the weather, applying uniform amounts of water, nutrients, pesticides and manually inspecting fields for signs of stress or pest infestation. Sometimes all of the variables align sometimes they don’t.  Crop yields fluctuate, so these conventional methods not only have the potential to waste time and resources they can negatively affect soil and water quality too. Rarely they do significantly boost crop productivity. Modern techniques like Satellite and UAV imagery and data tracking offers an effective way to survey small to large scale operations and assess crop health. Data collected can then be used to pinpoint areas of crop stress to determine when and where in how much water fertilizer and pesticide is needed to produce a healthy crop. Data analytics enable growers to make better soil water and crop management decisions.

About 25 millions of small-scale farmers produce 80% of the world’s coffee production. Coffee is the primary source of income for many of them and their dependence as a cash crop.  Coffee production faces several challenges. The work is labor-intensive. Coffee trees need pruning, fertilization, weeding, crop protection, irrigation. Coffee is one of the few agricultural products whose price is based on qualitative parameters, and its value varies significantly as quality improves. A piece of broad knowledge about techniques to produce high-quality coffee is indispensable for modern coffee growing and new management tools must be used, such as precision agriculture. Recording and tracking data at each stage of production (from harvesting to processing) could provide them with useful insights. Applying these insights could improve their practices and help them move closer to economic sustainability. Data can be a valuable resource for producers, and businesses. Data describes our reality and we can understand what’s happening in coffee. A lack of data can impact many aspects of the coffee production process. Currently, insufficient data exists on the best practices for climate-resilient farming, and the different climates, soil types, and farming systems that coffee producers face. Without this kind of information, it’s difficult for producers to determine what actions are best suited to their unique situation. Access to the right information can help them to improve the above aspects, while also helping them increase the consistency of their output and its quality. It can also act as a warning on future issues they might encounter and enhance their overall planning. For this reason, producers need to learn how to record and analyze their data at every stage of the production process. Besides, they need to identify what kind of data would be most useful for them to collect. 

Producers should record data regarding costs, expenses, crop applications, pest and disease control measures, production times, production processes, and production sales. They also track different stages of production including planting, harvesting, picking, milling, drying, parchment removal, and roasting. Moreover, data collection should include the precise plot location, when each step of the harvesting process was taken, how the coffee was processed, its commercial stock lot number, what kind of coffee qualities have been specified, and much more.

But there are some major problems that growers face when they are willing to collect data. Many coffee producers have the wish and dedication to begin using data collection as a tool but don’t have the assets or know-how to start. A be deficient in knowledge on where to collect or access data, as well as a panic that it will be misinterpreted, misused, or cause errors, are common barriers that producers face. To overcome these problems they should follow some simple steps like making a decision what data they want to collect, based on the objectives they’ve outlined for themselves or areas they’ve recognized are in necessitate of improvement, prepare a plan for gathering the data, as well as a time outline for data compilation and track and record data, checking and updating it regularly as conditions change and new information is added. Following these steps, producers will be able to gain the insight required to make decisions. This can help them improve their farming practices and economic sustainability. 

On the other hand, Climate change, plant diseases, and poverty are all serious threats to farmers, their families, and their coffee production efforts. Keeping track of and recording data might be exactly what’s needed to help them adopt more sustainable practices, increase their productivity, and get more out of their existing land. Consequently, any effort to address these issues must match the size and scope of the problem. Not all coffee producers will be in the same position to begin using data to their benefit. Depending on the budget and scope of the producer in question, different steps will be appropriate. For some, simply recognizing the importance of data and beginning to collect it will be the first step. Technology has a significant role to play here. There’s a good chance that this will involve the Internet of Things and Blockchain technology allows parties to distribute, differentiate, and verify trade that takes place between groups. Every step of the transaction is recorded and monitored by third parties. Coffee producers can use this to communicate and authenticate the quality, origin, and pricing of their coffee to buyers. Technology also encourages the development of smart farming. This is evident through farmers adopting sensors and using drones to check and trace everything from fruit size to crop health. 

By collecting data, producers can learn to pick up or even modify the time, place, and environment of their production. They can also map their expenses better, or expand to raise different or new appropriate varieties of coffees. Based on the information acquired from the data, producers can also plan next year’s capital and outputs, cultivate improved quality coffees, put off problems, spot new opportunities for improvement, better recognize each processing technique, and advance their techniques on drying coffee lots. As the practice of such data and data compilation tools grow to be more common and its costs reduce, this could characterize a huge chance for coffee producers to develop their crop quality and by and large sustainability. Whether the data is obtained through cutting-edge technology or tried and tested methods, it’s what the manufacturer does with it that will make a major distinction. 

Why is it important to track data in agriculture?

The predicted world population around 9.8 Billion in 2050 on the planet warns us about the upcoming food needs of the vast population along with the global warming that has been an emerging threat as well. This indicates that we need to boost our crop production significantly to feed the rising population while the colonization and climate changes are triggering depression to the farmlands already under cultivation. The US data alone shows a dip of 14 million acres of farmlands between 2014 to 2018.

On the other hand, traditional agriculture lacks many accuracies in planting and harvesting, water and fertilizer use, multiple weather episodes along with the occurrence of pests and diseases and ways to control them that contribute to intangible losses in production and income of the farmers.

To address such issues in agriculture, keeping the records of weather changes, soil conditions, moisture assessment, fertilizer requirement, and presence of pests and diseases and utilizing this data to make precise decisions on farming can lead towards sustainability and increased profitability. The sensors placed in the field provide data on soil texture & structure, soil pH, nutrients, and moisture levels whereas the farm machinery operated and mobilized by GPS and crops monitored and sprayed by the agriculture drones would lead to maximizing the efficiency of farming operations.

How data collection can help improve productivity and yields in coffee? 

The data collection can help several ways to improve productivity and yields in coffee. The adoption of one or more technologies can trigger yields along with improving the efficiency of farming operations;

By maintaining cropping calendars:

Based on the previous crop data, the decisions for planting crops that were better adaptable to a particular climatic condition can be made well in advance. This includes the types and varieties of the coffee, sowing & harvesting time, water, and nutrients requirements for the most adaptable and high yielding varieties in any particular area. Combing all sets of data would make a calendar for all agronomic and cultural practices that would easy to carry out.

Planting layout:

The data also helps in deciding the kind of planting patterns, plant spacing, and the number of plants per hectare would yield higher utilizing a lesser amount of inputs such as fertilizers and other necessary inputs to obtain optimum growth level for maximum productivity. Coffee is pretty sensitive to nutrient dosages and may behave adversely if the standard fertilization is not practiced.

Diseases and Pest Monitoring:

The biggest productivity losses occur in Coffee when pest and disease infestation is not monitored timely. The Precise data and images collected using UAVs and sensors can warn about such infestations at a very early stage whereas the only affected plants can be sprayed exclusively using Aerial spraying technique that cuts the application cost of insecticides increasing productivity and profitability of Coffee farmers.

Watering:

The ground sensors connected to the irrigation system collect data on the ground moisture and temperature. Any slight fluctuation in humidity and temperature is noticed in the form of data that sets the system ON or OFF depending on the need of the Coffee crop. Such an application saves time and costs on labor to improve productivity and yield of Coffee.

Harvesting Decisions:

Timely crop harvesting can add 20% or more in the potential of Coffee yield. Farm data advises on the maturity of the Coffee crop through detecting the amount of moisture and color in the clusters of cherries. Timely harvest enhances the quality and quantity of the Coffee cherries to add to the profitability of the growers.

Food Traceability:

Data has the biggest advantages in tracing the origin and the type of Coffee grown, it’s mobility and value addition, and paying the farmers remotely using modern tools of E-Payments in a food supply chain. 

What can we learn by collecting data at the farm level?

Although, there are several things to learn from the farm data as it helps us to make precise decisions well in advance to prepare us fully for the next cropping season. The insights on the following features can be learned from the data at the farm level;

• The type of variety and the best adaptable location at the farm.
• Temperature requirements during different stages of crop growth.
• The periods of droughts and precipitation in the cropping season.
• The exact amount of fertilizers and insecticide used for maturity.
• The type and time of pests and disease infestations.
• The climatic conditions and their severity.
• The irrigation needs of a particular crop.
• Complete records and traceability of the product along with the earning during different cropping seasons.
• It also helps to determine the pricing trends in the market.

With white-label you can replace the Coffee Conex branding with your own, making Coffee Conex truly yours and comply with branding requirements.  

Hide Cafe Conex Branding

Any mention of “Coffee Conex” will be completely removed as soon as white-label is activated, so the platform will look as if it is built by you.

Change the interface colors

Update the color of the interface and login pages to match your brand.

Setup a custom domain

Every Coffee Conex business has a unique sub domain such as domain.coffeeconex.com, which can be replaced with a custom domain to match your brand, such as portal.brand.com.

Send emails from your email address

All outbound emails such as notifications and invites are sent from hello@coffeeconex.com – which can be replaced with your own custom email address to match your brand, such as hello@brand.com

Coffee Conex is committed to leveraging technology to support agricultural development. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity. Our team is proud our technology can facilitate several of these goals.

SDG 1: No Poverty
With the majority of the world’s extreme poor working in agriculture, using Coffee Conex’s digital platform to register farmers, improve access to value chains, productivity-enhance inputs and rural financial services, can make significant contribution to reducing poverty.

SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
We enable a more direct and transparent smallholder access to formal and global agricultural value chains, generating improved livelihooods and more stable income sources.

SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production
We provide information to enable data-driven decision making to track and access optimal agricultural input applications, improve responses to pest and disease outbreaks and minimize overuse of chemical inputs.

SDG 13: Climate Action
With climate change creating huge impacts on emerging market farmers, we help combat deforestation through GPS visibility to the field level, ensuring organizations are not buying from deforested areas. Carbon footprints associated with production can be calculated using data on the platform, supporting data-driven decision making to improve sequestration.

SDG 15: Life on Land
We support more efficient agricultural production. Field mapping and visibility to the farmer level enables organizations to ensure they source only from sustainable farming areas and not recently deforested ones.

Data makes the invisible, visible. From supporting the most marginalized communities to measuring the full impact of your programs, data can empower all levels of your organization to achieve their full potential. Nevertheless, gathering high-quality, clean data—not to mention storing it in a secure, compliant, and interoperable format—can be a daunting task. Unfortunately, too often organizations don’t have access to the right data or proper visibility into data they already have, making understanding data’s importance and realizing its potential a persistent challenge.

With the proliferation of new tools and resources available to capture and synthesize data, it can be hard to know how to start compiling usable information and actionable insights.

The most important first step to leveraging your data is to understand what type of data is being collected, how it’s being collected, and the risks associated with poor data collection and management.

Exposing the Invisible

Unknowingly, you’re probably already collecting a fair amount of data about your activities. In fact, data can be found in many of the tasks that are done on a daily basis. However, it might “live” in various applications and handwritten notes filed away by individual team members. Every employee, contractor, trainer, and volunteer is simultaneously acting as a data collector, amassing thousands of points of information about the communities they work with to not only help beneficiaries, but to improve the effectiveness of the programs they are working on.

Data, then, must be thought of as the entire process of collecting, linking, cleaning, enriching, and augmenting internal information (potentially with additional external data sources), both offline and online.

Albeit, one of the best ways to organize and access data is to digitize everything. It is impossible to improve what you can’t measure, after all, so taking offline interactions and information and bringing them online offers a distinct quantitative advantage. Digitizing customer and beneficiary interactions provides a wealth of information for marketing, sales, and program development, while digitizing internal processes generates data that can be used to optimize operations and improve productivity.

Furthermore, hard data can be used to help reliably quantify the effectiveness of a program and organization. Hart-felt stories are a great means of marketing and communication but program sustainability and indicators of longevity is just as important to stakeholders.

Types of Data

When discussing data collection, it’s helpful to outline the types of data that are often collected. Data is typically be collected in the following formats:

As data generation and collection grow in volume, data relevance will become even more important. It is simply impractical to collect and save every bit of the terabytes of data that is generated on a minute-by-minute basis. Defining certain requirements based on particular use cases will help ensure that only relevant data is captured. 

The following categories can be used to help define data collection:

In combination with data from third-party sources, there is a whole wealth of knowledge to be analyzed, and also protected. But there are also inherent problems with data collection, which can cause an issue with data quality.

Potential Problems When Collecting Data

Not knowing where or how data is being collected can lead to issues with proper analysis and the quality of data being stored. The reliability of your data is brought into question without appropriate visibility into its source. Reliability is the key concept by which data can be used to inform decisions. When data is unreliable, you run the risk of making poor decisions which will only harm the program in the long-run.

Problems can also arise when teams use multiple different solutions for data collection, many of which don’t integrate with one another, creating duplicate data sets or incomplete data sets. Faced with limited capacity and resources, many organizations turn to free solutions like Excel, Google Forms, MailChimp, and Survey Monkey, but every step added to the process presents a risk for data duplication, omission, or exposure. This disconnected and unacknowledged risk is often where failures, data breaches, and loss of data quality occurs. 

Data collection also impacts how sensitive data is stored, identified, and ultimately protected. Organizations that collect and use personal data bear legal and ethical responsibility for the handling and protection of this data. However, many are unaware of this responsibility, de-prioritize it, or believe they lack the resources to comply with the complex and nuanced requirements of applicable data privacy rules. 

Protecting Sensitive Data

One of the most significant challenges posed to organizations by data protection law is simply a lack of awareness. New policies and regulations have expanded data protection laws around the globe in recent years, which restrict the way companies can use, manage, and retain customer and employee data. Since so many documents today are stored online, many people assume the new law applies only to electronic files. But consumer rights to the protection of their personal information apply just as much to paper documents as electronic ones. Understanding what data is being collected, how it is collected, and how the regulations apply to the security of that data can help ensure compliance. 

Data Privacy and Protection Legislation 

The US does not have a single, comprehensive federal law regulating privacy and the collection, use, processing, disclosure, and security of personal information. Instead, there is a patchwork of laws governing privacy such as:

• System of federal rules that are sector-specific: (COPPA, GLBA, HIPAA, TCPA, FCRA, FERPA, etc.) 
• System of state laws (i.e., data breach notifications laws) 
• Government regulators (FCC, FTC, State AGs – “unfair or deceptive practices”) 
• Common law principles (invasion of privacy, negligence, etc.) 

After European Parliament passed the EU GDPR, many organizations have focused their efforts on complying with the European’s standardized set of rules on protecting user data because of its comprehensive approach. While enforcement of these rules pertains mostly to organizations located within the EU, the EU GDPR has essentially become a standard for data protection across the world. The regulations behind GDPR are broken down into 8 major principles.

 8 Key Principles of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

1. The right to access
This means that individuals have the right to request access to their personal data and to ask how their data is used by an organization after it has been gathered. The company must provide a copy of the personal data, free of charge if requested.

2. The right to be forgotten
If consumers are no longer customers, or if they withdraw their consent from a company to use their personal data, then they have the right to have their data deleted.

3. The right to data portability
Individuals have a right to transfer their data from one service provider to another. 

4. The right to be informed
This covers any gathering of data by companies, and individuals must be informed before data is gathered. Consumers have to opt-in for their data to be gathered and provide consent.

5. The right to have information corrected
This ensures that individuals can have their data updated if it is out of date or incomplete or incorrect.

6. The right to restrict processing
Individuals can request that their data is not used for processing. Their record can remain in place, but not be used.

7. The right to object
This includes the right of individuals to stop the processing of their data for direct marketing. 

8. The right to be notified
If there has been a data breach which compromises an individual’s personal data, the individual has a right to be informed within 72 hours of first having become aware of the breach.

Once an organization has identified where and how it collects and stores personal data, and informed itself about the data privacy rules that may apply, the next step is to adopt internal policies and procedures to bring the organization into compliance. Compliance is not always easy, however, especially with limited resources or know-how. It is advisable to consult with privacy experts to help develop internal policies and best practices, and consider leveling up your data collection and storage mechanisms.

How the Cloud Can Help

Cloud computing refers to technologies that use the Internet as a platform to give users nearly ubiquitous access to highly scalable, flexible, and powerful computing resources through online services that are hosted in off-site data centers. Anyone who has used a search engine, online email service, or social network has already experienced a version of cloud computing. Today, however, organizations are rapidly moving “to the cloud” to make their operations more effective, efficient, and more secure.

Cloud computing can help organizations achieve their cybersecurity and privacy goals in the following ways:

• Focusing resources. Cloud Computing is highly scalable and flexible, making it an accessible and affordable solution for almost every organization. By leveraging the versatility of cloud computing, organizations can use less time and finances to maximize value.
• Simplifying governance. Because applications and services are hosted in data centers that are operated and maintained by the cloud service provider, cloud computing reduces the burden on organizations to install, maintain, and update hardware and software. 
• Leveraging existing Cloud security. Perhaps most significantly, the cloud also delivers an immediate step change in security for organizations, without a large upfront investment. This is valuable for both cybersecurity and data protection compliance. . 

Conclusion

The benefits of clean and efficient data collection extends beyond organizational optimization and can significantly impact a business’s ability to execute their goals. Data digitization increases an organization’s capacity to become more efficient by deploying modern, resilient technology solutions. Organizations that successfully modernize their data practices will be better positioned to fulfill their mission in the long run.

At the same time, there are clear risks involved with scaling data strategies that don’t include data protection considerations. Those that neglect to address privacy and security vulnerabilities are at risk for data breaches, exposing those they are meant to serve to even more risks. There are no magic solutions— organizations are responsible for investing the time and resources necessary to address these challenges. However, in many cases, cloud computing can help by offering scalable and powerful online solutions that decrease overhead and increase data security. 

Want to know more? Contact us to see how Coffee Conex can help you bring your offline data online.