Vaibhav Sinha.
A food product may travel a long way before it reaches a shop shelf. It can pass through farms, processing units, warehouses and distributors, with each stage adding another layer to its journey. Yet when something goes wrong, finding out where the problem started is not always easy.
This is the area Vaibhav Sinha has chosen to work in. Through Earthen Connect, he is focusing on food traceability and the information that follows a product from its source through the supply chain.
Earthen Connect's work has also reached beyond individual consumers. Its traceability network connects more than 100,000 farmers, and products using the system are available in over 500 retail stores. The platform allows consumers to scan a product and find information about its origin, sourcing and journey through the supply chain.
For farmers, the system offers a way to make sourcing information more visible to the people buying their products. Retailers and consumers, meanwhile, can access details that would otherwise be difficult to find on a package alone. The aim is to bring more transparency to a supply chain where the people growing food and the people buying it can be far removed from each other.
The idea goes beyond letting consumers scan a QR code to learn about a product. For businesses, knowing where food has been and how it has moved can also help when they need to look into delays, stock discrepancies or products that have gone unsold. If records are missing at one stage, piecing together what happened can take time.
Food waste is one reason this information matters. A product that spoils or never reaches the market represents a loss for the business, but the cost does not end there. Water, energy and other resources have already gone into producing it. Packaging and transportation add to that cost. When food is discarded, much of that effort is lost with it.
Traceability cannot prevent every loss. It can, however, give businesses a clearer record to examine when products are delayed or wasted. Whether that leads to less spoilage depends on the cause of the problem and what the business does about it.
For Vaibhav Sinha, the subject also connects with a bigger question: how can food businesses account for their environmental impact? Sustainability commitments are increasingly part of corporate reporting, including environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosures. But a company needs reliable information about its operations to explain its progress. Records of sourcing and product movement can contribute to that picture, although they do not, on their own, prove that emissions or waste have fallen.
Vaibhav has explored these questions in his book, The Traceable Future: Rethinking Food Through Identity, Infrastructure, and Accountability . It looks at the gaps in today's food supply chains and the role digital identity and connected information could play in making them more transparent.
The difficulty is that no single business may have the complete record of a product's journey. A farmer knows where it was grown, a processor records how it was handled, and a distributor knows where it went next. Unless this information can be brought together, it is difficult to follow the product from one stage to another.
Keeping those records connected is not always straightforward. Information can be missed or left outdated, and smaller producers and intermediaries may not all use the same systems. Even when the records are available, businesses still need to act on what they reveal if they want to prevent food from being wasted.
That distinction matters when traceability is discussed as part of sustainability. Tracking a product is one thing; showing that the process has reduced waste or environmental impact is another. The latter requires evidence of actual results.
Vaibhav's work sits within this effort to make food supply chains easier to follow and the information behind them more accessible. As businesses face questions about product origin, waste and sustainability, traceability can give them a better starting point. The real test is whether they can use that information to change how food is handled, moved and accounted for.
