Building Commercial Standards to Boost Trade in Nutrient Enriched Crops

Feb 11, 2021

In every step of commercial supply chains, purchasers look to standards to ensure that suppliers are providing valid products and services. Standards are essential for buyers to know what they are getting and to document transactions so that users further along the value chain know where their product has originated. Standards allow for smooth transactions of goods, and ultimately protect the consumer.

Commercial supply chains

Nutrient enriched crops, also called biofortified crops, are a relatively recent innovation developed by HarvestPlus and its CGIAR global agricultural research partners to improve the micronutrient content of the world’s most-widely consumed staples, without use of transgenic modification. The primary objective of these traditionally bred crops is to tackle micronutrient deficiency (hidden hunger) on a large scale.

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Video: Learning to Wrench From Dad the Hard Way

Harvest is a week out and the farm picked this week to fall apart. The truck needs a battery, the barn curtain's got a problem, and the corn and beans are telling us we're out of time to get it all fixed.

So it's a full day of wrenching. Tork supervises while I get the truck back running, then we're out at the hog barn where one rusted up part has the whole curtain system hung up. Ladder work, cable work, and a little dad-and-son disagreement about the right way to do it. We close it out walking the fields, shelling beans and checking corn, because whether everything's fixed or not, harvest starts when harvest starts.

Chapters: 00:00 Everything breaks the week before harvest 01:00 Tork supervises while I fix the truck 12:30 Out to the barn to find the curtain problem 14:30 One rusty part hung up the whole curtain 20:00 Running the curtain cable from the ladder 24:00 Walking the beans and corn before harvest 26:30 Wrapping up

We're a 6th generation family farm in southeast Iowa showing the real ups and downs of pig farming and row crop farming. No script, just the work. Subscribe and follow along.

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