Driving Fair Trade and Consistency Across the Potato Industry

This week the National Potato Council of Kenya moved the conversation from policy to practice, publishing a follow-up on harmonizing potato standards and strengthening traceability measures across seed, ware and processor chains. The renewed push comes amid growing interest from processors and export buyers who demand verifiable origin and production details before they buy from Kenyan producers. GS1 standards can slot directly into these efforts: assigning GTINs to packaged potato seed lines and finished seed potatoes, GLNs to farms and collection center’s and using SSCCs on pallet labels to capture batch, harvest date and movement history.

When paired with simple QR/2D labels (containing GTIN + batch + harvest date), buyers and certification bodies can instantly verify provenance and chain-of-custody from farm to buyer, reducing rejections at borders and improving price returns for compliant farmers. GS1’s light implementation approach (structured identifiers + standard data fields) would also let mobile aggregation apps feed consistent data into county and national registries, making audits faster and less costly for smallholders.