ABSTRACT Mobile Organic Certification (MobiCert) a theoretical foundation for a practical p.pdfVIP

March 2006 Mobile Organic Certification (MobiCert): a theoretical foundation for a practical project Nhiem Lu Paula M.C. Swatman School of Computer and Information Science University of South Australia Adelaide, South Australia nhiem.lu@.au; paula.swatman@.au ABSTRACT In the last few years uptake of organic agriculture has increased rapidly worldwide and organic farms can now be found in almost every country in the world (Willer and Yussefi, 2005). Australia is a major supplier of organic produce and, despite the challenges of huge distances and comparatively poor rural telecommunications, the sustainable agriculture sector is playing an increasingly important role in the primary production sector (Kondinin Group, 2000, Alexandra and May, 2004). The entire high-volume/low-profit grocery sector (BLS, 2004) is increasingly turning to computer support to maximise returns from every stage of its highly integrated supply chain. From in-store strategies such as EDLP (Catalu?a et al., 2005, Subrahmanyan, 2000) to inter-organisational optimisation, approaches such Efficient Consumer Response (Harris et al., 1999, Pearce, 1996) and, more recently, integrated cold chain logistics (Salin, 2002, Lovell, 2002) the industry is endeavouring to squeeze maximum profitability from each stage in its value chain. The one group which has not, thus far, been included to any great extent in these activities is the primary producers – the creators of the food which ends up on the supermarket shelves. Attempts are now beginning to incorporate some of the largest meat producers into industry-supported, WiFi-based cold chain collaboration projects (Refrigerated Transporter, 2002, Food production daily, 2004, Mills, 2005), but these attempts are the merest tip of the primary production iceberg, almost all of which remains inaccessible to computer integration. The SAmCom (Sustainable Agriculture mobile Commerce) project provides a framework for a series of