Broccoli traceability app:

Broccoli traceability app manages wash, sort, grading packing of broccoli for better broccoli food safety traceability in the broccoli supply chain. 100% accurate broccoli food safety, recalls, audits, and traceability tracking both up and down the supply chain.


Broccoli traceability app:

Broccoli traceability app manages wash, sort, grading packing of broccoli for better broccoli food safety traceability in the broccoli supply chain. 100% accurate broccoli food safety, recalls, audits, and traceability tracking both up and down the supply chain. 

Broccoli value adding traceability

For food service and processors:  specify the ingredients for each product you manufacture, Farmsoft will calculate required quantities to fill open orders and schedule the batch.  Automatic creation of inventory outputs.  All ingredients and inputs are costed.

Broccoli Unlimited sites & warehouse traceability

Create multiple sites, specify which sites each employee can view (this restricts inventory, orders, invoices etc to selected sites).  Great for businesses with multiple locations across the country or planet.

Global Broccoli traceability standards

Farmsoft supports global traceability standards such as GS1 Global Traceability Standard,  

Broccoli purchase order traceability

Order raw materials, packaging materials and more from suppliers.  Analyze orders and prices using Purchases dashboard. 

Broccoli Re-order alerts for traceability

Receive alerts when inventory needs to be reordered, analyze inventory that will need ordering in the future, and inventory that is approaching expiry...


Broccoli Finance apps

Integrate with Xero finance, or export invoices (AR) and Purchase Orders (AP) to your chosen finance app like MYOB, Quickbooks, , FreshBooks, Wave, SaasAnt, SAGE and others...

Broccoli packing & processing inventory control sales traceability
Broccoli packing & processing, inventory QC traceability by farmsoft reduces waste and increases productivity in broccoli packing businesses.
Farmsoft delivers reduced waste in the broccoli packing traceability & quality control, processing, storage, distribution phases. By enforcing best practices, FIFO, inventory expiry monitoring, and easy stock takes to minimize waste and maximize packing profit. Use bar-code managed inventory, labeling, 3D pallet storage, to help reduce waste.

BROCCOLI PACKING
Conduct recalls in seconds, with full confidence of accuracy and reliability. Minimize risk by ensuring accurate traceability is automatically captured. Pass audits with ease & reduce compliance costs using farmsoft's traceability guidelines. Trace fresh produce up and down the supply chain, over multiple traceability hops. Instantly produce farm records and any other farm traceability records if you optionally use our farm solution.

REDUCE ADMINISTRATION COSTS FOR BROCCOLI PACKING
Minimize your administration costs with automatic paperwork generation. Ensure accuracy of paperwork by having necessary documentation (invoice formats, export documents, transport documents etc) automatically generated based on the needs of the specific customer - ensuring timely and accurate documentation. No more rejected orders because of bad documentation accompanying a shipment. Food traceability software made easy!

CONSISTENT QUALITY CONTROL FOR BROCCOLI PACKING
Guarantee consistent, accurate, and efficient quality control is performed at any part of the fresh produce handling life-cycle; including during delivery, pre processing, post processing, and dispatch. Create quality control tests based on each customers requirements, and even create a daily factory hygiene test, employee performance tests and more. Accurate quality control helps to improve customer confidence and quality perception. Easily follow fresh produce quality control & fresh produce inventory guidelines.

BETTER PRODUCTION PLANNING & DISPATCH FOR BROCCOLI PACKING
Monitor orders, assign orders to specific pack-houses (you can have unlimited processing sites in farmsoft), and allow micro monitoring of each production lines output requirements using dashboards. The dashboards ensure the correct products are produced at the correct time to fill orders. Dispatch teams are given details on their mobile device (or PC/Mac) and scan pallets onto orders. Administration teams can see orders are picked and ready for dispatch, and are presented with the correct documents for printing. All of these features result in improved accuracy of both production and dispatch processes.

OPTIONAL FARM SOFTWARE INTEGRATION FOR FARM TO PLATE MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS
Optionally use farmsoft Farm Management software with our Post Harvest solution. Using both solutions provides an end to end solution from field to plate. Farm Management by farmsoft delivers full farm record keeping, farm inventory, cost monitoring, budgeting, best practice enforcement, and adherence to international farming standards. Use Farm Management by farmsoft to manage your own farms, or even hundreds of external farms that supply your fresh produce company.     Broccoli packing & processing, food service business management software for improved food safety & reduced waste. Broccoli packing & processing, inventory QC traceability by farmsoft reduces waste and increases productivity in broccoli packing businesses.

Tracing Broccoli: The Journey from Seed to Table
This green plant is a window into better understanding food production and distribution at the Hudson Valley Farm Hub.

In the spring of 2019, the Hudson Valley Farm Hub began following several trays of broccoli on camera as a window into the process of growing vegetables — from production to distribution. 

While production is a process that can be broken down into predictable parts, there remain the constant wildcards of Mother Nature and shifts in weather. And so it was with broccoli.

Out of the 20 different vegetables planted on 30 acres in 2019, broccoli occupied a total of 7.5 acres. Compared to other vegetables at the farm, it had a relatively lengthy growing season; from March through November. The five varieties of broccoli were all planted using a “high density” technique — a first for the Farm Hub. As Jeff Arnold, vegetable production manager, explains, this method produces smaller heads than in a traditional system, but because there are more plants per acre, the overall yield tends to be higher. The decision to grow high-density broccoli was partly to combat hollow stem, a defect that can be caused by nutrient imbalances and environmental factors. The result leaves a visibly empty tunnel in the flowers’ stem. Depending on the cause, tighter plant spacing can remedy the defect. The Farm Hub had wrestled with hollow stem for several growing seasons and finally saw a dramatic reduction in 2019. 

But the past growing season was not immune to curveballs. Broccoli’s early success (the plants that were seeded in early spring and harvested in early summer) was overshadowed by later plantings that were affected by Black Rot and Downy Mildew — two pathogens that can be devastating in biological systems. These bacterial and fungal diseases, common enemies of the brassica family, emerged in July. The pathogens can be spread by weed seeds, wind, and splashing rain, and this year, some of the broccoli at the Farm Hub was hit particularly hard due to the high-density planting. Organic control options for these diseases are limited and largely ineffective. Plants are infected early in life and if environmental conditions favor the disease, the heads that develop can become deformed and unmarketable.

Broccoli being harvested at the Hudson Valley Farm Hub in 2019.
Courtesy of Hudson Valley Farm Hub

In addition to disease avoidance, the right temperature is critical to a successful harvest. Broccoli is especially unpredictable when it comes to temperature. It prefers a window of 50 to 70 degrees and thrives in regions with cooler climates. 

“Broccoli is a cool-season crop that is sensitive to temperatures both too high and too low. Lower temperatures can result in `buttoning up,’ or small premature heads, while higher temperatures can result in uneven bud formation and poor flavor,” says Arnold.

On a positive note, the harvests in early summer were robust, and boxes of perfect broccoli from that part of the season were transported from the wash and pack facility at the farm to food pantries and soup kitchens in Ulster County. 

The trays of broccoli that we followed on camera were harvested, moved to the wash and pack, and picked up by folks from the CCE-Orange County’s  Gleaning/Food Access program that distributes produce to the Hudson Valley Food Bank and to local food pantries, soup kitchens, and community organizations. Soon after, the broccoli was trucked to The Putnam Valley Community Food Pantry and distributed to over 40 families. 

Countless factors can determine the success and failure of a crop. Ultimately, the season ended on a positive note with a mostly healthy crop of broccoli. The broccoli was processed for donation and also sold at the Kingston YMCA winter market. The field was mowed and disked in on Veterans Day to make room for a blanket of cover crops. 

The Farm Hub will continue to grow broccoli. Last year’s growing season remains an important learning lesson as growers and researchers seek to find ways to manage disease. This spring, the Farm Hub will host a trial by Cornell University researchers which will test the effectiveness of a range of bio-rational pest controls in broccoli production (see separate story on research trials). 

A field of broccoli at dawn. Courtesy of Hudson Valley Farm Hub

Even if there is hollow stem, Arnold says the broccoli is sellable and edible since the problem is cosmetic and it can be sold as crowns or as florets.

“We are going into it knowing that there may be some hollow stem, but the reduction in disease will be well worth it,” says Arnold. 

Soon the sounds of the whir and grind of the seeder will fill the greenhouse, the seeds will find a temporary home where they are watered and soak in the light that filters through the opaque greenhouse. In a few weeks the wagons will be packed with a matrix of trays where the tiny plants will acclimate to the natural elements before being planted out in the field. A new cycle begins again.

Broccoli Safety & Traceability
Through the analysis and elaboration on the research status, system design and main structure of the domestic and foreign traceability system, given that we failed to retrieve the related research of broccoli safety production early-warning and quality traceability systems in domestic till now, we establish the broccoli safety production early warning, control as well as the quality traceability management systems on the basis of previous organic vegetables quality traceability system by using the barcode/QR code and computer component technology. It fully embodies the public security concept that the safe agricultural products are produced and unsafe products are detected. This system has good extensibility in many fields, a variety of security labels and so on.

Broccoli crown traceability
While production is a process that can be broken down into predictable parts, there remain the constant wildcards of Mother Nature and shifts in weather. And so it was with broccoli.

Out of the 20 different vegetables planted on 30 acres in 2019, broccoli occupied a total of 7.5 acres. Compared to other vegetables at the farm, it had a relatively lengthy growing season; from March through November. The five varieties of broccoli were all planted using a “high density” technique—a first for the Farm Hub. As Jeff Arnold, vegetable production manager, explains, this method produces smaller heads than in a traditional system, but because there are more plants per acre, the overall yield tends to be higher. The decision to grow high-density broccoli was partly to combat hollow stem, a defect that can be caused by nutrient imbalances and environmental factors. The result leaves a visibly empty tunnel in the flowers’ stem. Depending on the cause, tighter plant spacing can remedy the defect. The Farm Hub had wrestled with hollow stem for several growing seasons and finally saw a dramatic reduction in 2019.


Jeff Arnold, the vegetable production manager, examines a broccoli crown.
But the past growing season was not immune to curveballs. Broccoli’s early success (the plants that were seeded in early spring and harvested in early summer) was overshadowed by later plantings that were affected by Black Rot and Downy Mildew—two pathogens that can be devastating in biological systems. These bacterial and fungal diseases, common enemies of the brassica family, emerged in July. The pathogens can be spread by weed seeds, wind, and splashing rain, and this year, some of the broccoli at the Farm Hub was hit particularly hard due to the high-density planting. Organic control options for these diseases are limited and largely ineffective. Plants are infected early in life and if environmental conditions favor the disease, the heads that develop can become deformed and unmarketable.


Production staff harvest broccoli last summer.
In addition to disease avoidance, the right temperature is critical to a successful harvest. Broccoli is especially unpredictable when it comes to temperature. It prefers a window of 50 to 70 degrees and thrives in regions with cooler climates.

“Broccoli is a cool-season crop that is sensitive to temperatures both too high and too low. Lower temperatures can result in `buttoning up,’ or small premature heads, while higher temperatures can result in uneven bud formation and poor flavor,” says Arnold.

On a positive note, the harvests in early summer were robust, and boxes of perfect broccoli from that part of the season were transported from the wash and pack facility at the farm to food pantries and soup kitchens in Ulster County.


Stiles Najac, from Cornell Cooperative Extension Orange County’s gleaning program, picks up broccoli for donation.
The trays of broccoli that we followed on camera were harvested, moved to the wash and pack, and picked up by folks from the CCE-Orange County’s Gleaning/Food Access program that distributes produce to the Hudson Valley Food Bank and to local food pantries, soup kitchens, and community organizations. Soon after, the broccoli was trucked to The Putnam Valley Community Food Pantry and distributed to over 40 families.

A new broccoli traceability vantage

Countless factors can determine the success and failure of a crop. Ultimately, the season ended on a positive note with a mostly healthy crop of broccoli. The broccoli was processed for donation and also sold at the Kingston YMCA winter market. The field was mowed and disked in on Veterans Day to make room for a blanket of cover crops.


Broccoli will again be seeded this spring.
The Farm Hub will continue to grow broccoli. Last year’s growing season remains an important learning lesson as growers and researchers seek to find ways to manage disease. This spring, the Farm Hub will host a trial by Cornell researchers which will test the effectiveness of a range of bio-rational pest controls in broccoli production (see separate story on research trials).

Even if there is hollow stem, Arnold says the broccoli is sellable and edible since the problem is cosmetic and it can be sold as crowns or as florets.

“We are going into it knowing that there may be some hollow stem, but the reduction in disease will be well worth it,” says Arnold.

Soon the sounds of the whir and grind of the seeder will fill the greenhouse, the seeds will find a temporary home where they are watered and soak in the light that filters through the opaque greenhouse. In a few weeks the wagons will be packed with a matrix of trays where the tiny plants will acclimate to the natural elements before being planted out in the field. A new cycle begins again