Eleven Rivers participates in the Conference Program of Expo Agro Sinaloa 2018

On February 15 and 16, within the framework of the Conferences Program of the 28th edition of Expo Agro Sinaloa, Mr. José Raymundo Elizalde Gastelo, Director of Eleven Rivers, presented the following topics: “Evolution of the Market Requirements for Fruits and Vegetables” and “New marketing channels for fruits and vegetables” in the center of innovation and technology transfer.

In his first conference, Mr. Elizalde explained to the attendees how the agricultural industry has been transformed in recent years and how, over time, consumers and buyers have become increasingly informed and demanding about all the characteristics they consider important in their products: appearance, size, quality, safety and social responsibility.

Based on the foregoing, he spoke of the commercial importance that certifications currently have for agricultural companies, which are indispensable for accessing international markets; but beyond this, the real value that must be attributed to the certifications is the change of the technical personnel and of all the collaborators of the company towards a culture of compliance, the implementation of good agricultural practices, manufacturing, traceability, that is to say, that the company functions under a management system that provides them with the continuity of their processes and the confidence that things are done well all the time, by knowing the importance that each of the company’s collaborators has in the production of food, so that risks are reduced.

He also mentioned the main foundations on which these trends are based, such as the changes in international regulations, referring principally to the provisions of the US Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), changes in intercommunications through smart devices (such as smart phones), the appearance of crowdsourcing sites and legal firms specializing in diseases caused by food outbreaks and the improvements in the technologies available for the analysis of food contamination such as genomic traceability.

In his second presentation “New marketing channels for fruits and vegetables” Mr. Elizalde emphasized the new sales options that exist through technological advances, which represent an important opportunity for the agricultural industry.

He showed the new technological advances available for the fruit and vegetable trade, such as the sale through mobile applications, he gave examples of how most of the retail companies have now migrated to the online sales scheme, besides these possibilities showed other new technological developments that are available in the market for direct sales, attending the new trends of consumption and commercialization through which farmes could sell their products.