RFID for Animals, Food, & Farming—the Largest Market of All

By Dr Peter Harrop
IDTechEx

RFID for Animals, Food, and Farming will become the largest RFID market of all because it will benefit the food supply chain in a huge number of ways including livestock disease control and merchandising prepared food. This $9.4 billion market in 2017 for RFID systems and tags will also be based on rapid paybacks from improved traceability, condition monitoring, crime reduction and error prevention (for example, as currently used in milk storage in New Zealand). It will be powered by such innovations as RFID tags that do not contain a silicon chip and are therefore one tenth of the cost and Real Time Locating Systems (RTLS) - a form of active RFID - that is increasingly affordable for asset control and other uses. There are new advances in signal handling and readers at the favourite frequency HF that increase range by 50-400 percent. However, there is temporary disappointment at some consumer goods and RFID suppliers that cannot persuade certain retailers to share the considerable financial benefits of today’s UHF tagging of pallets and cases and some who suffer technical problems with this approach.

These technologies, solutions and markets are analysed in detail in the new IDTechEx report “RFID for Animals, Food and Farming 2007-2017.” This report will be invaluable to those in the food and farming industry, the logistics and other companies serving these industries and, of course, in the RFID industry. It includes detailed ten year forecasts for 2007-2017 by sector, tag and system and a large number of case studies to bring the subject alive and illustrate best practice. There are lessons from Australia to Canada. They range from error prevention in logistics of pistachio nuts in California to ostrich farming in South Africa, the tagging of ham in retailers in Spain and the tracing of food in China. Then there is use of RFID cards to buy Coca-Cola in Japan and manage Starbucks deliveries in the USA, even the tagging of fish in Canada and trees in Germany. Readers will see many opportunities to cross fertilise these ideas.

The report takes a balanced view of some changes of course in the industry. For example, it explains the Electronic Product Code (EPC) but also discusses the concern of many in East Asia that the EPCglobal organization and product specifications are too expensive for management of the food supply chain and the resulting emergence of the locally managed Universal Product Code and specifications now being trialed by governments in seven East Asian countries.