Connected-Farmers

Field audit
Improving supply chain efficiency and auditing
Unilever’s Lipton tea brand has improved efficiency in its Turkish supply chain with
a mobile auditing application. By making it quicker and easier to monitor farmer
performance, Lipton can support farmers to improve their practices and bring more
producers into its sustainable tea supply chain. This will enable more small-scale
producers to access premium markets for certified produce.
Lipton aims to reduce its impact on the environment and to
improve the livelihoods of tea farmers. It sources its tea from
producers that have been certified by the Rainforest Alliance for
meeting high social and environmental standards, with a goal
of 100% certified tea in teabags and teapot bags by the end of
2015 to meet growing consumer demand.
In Turkey, the world’s fifth largest tea producer, Lipton has
more than 15,000 tea suppliers, mainly smallholder farmers.
It previously used a cumbersome paper-based auditing system
to monitor standards and to check its farmers were meeting
Rainforest Alliance criteria. With each auditor needing to
cover a thousand farmers, the system was time-consuming
and inefficient, with paper records needing to be retyped then
archived on return to the office.
Now ECOTAB – a mobile auditing application developed by
Vodafone and Unilever working with the Rainforest Alliance
– has significantly improved efficiency. With ECOTAB, field
auditors have been provided with and trained on the use of
tablet devices. They input audit data directly into a central
database from the field, via easy-to-use forms on the ECOTAB
app. Audit results are uploaded quickly and can be tracked in
real time.
Soil sampling and analysis to optimise fertiliser usage and
reduce the environmental impact of excess application of
fertilisers is key to monitoring compliance with Rainforest
Alliance standards. Samples are collected by field auditors and
sent to the lab for analysis. Previously, the tracking process
was inefficient, with paper labels that often came unstuck and
the need for auditors to manually input data. With ECOTAB, the
auditor takes the sample and creates a digital label using GPS
coordinates. The sample can be tracked with one unique digital
ID, removing the need to input data manually and reducing the
opportunity for samples to be lost or mislabelled.
The ECOTAB application was recognised as Best Business-to-
Business Partnership by the Ethical Corporation’s Responsible
Business Awards in 2013.
22 Vodafone Connected Farming in India