（Singapore, 25.10.2026）Qu Dongyu, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), stated at the 2026 World Food Prize ceremony: “Food that makes people sick cannot nourish them.” He cited data showing that unsafe food causes 866 million illnesses globally each year, resulting in an estimated US$110 billion (approximately S$140.5 billion) in lost productivity and medical costs in low- and middle-income countries alone.
Data released by the World Health Organization (WHO) in June 2026 shows that unsafe food causes approximately 1.5 million deaths each year, with children under five bearing nearly one-third of the burden of illnesses caused by unsafe food.
Qu Dongyu further noted that safe food is the foundation of food security: “Without safety, it cannot be called food. Safe food nourishes us, sustains livelihoods, and builds trust in the food system.” This suggests that food safety and brand trust are closely linked, and that consumers’ recognition of a brand often depends first on the certainty of food safety, rather than on marketing or packaging.
For agricultural enterprises, food safety is not merely a compliance requirement at the production stage, but a prerequisite for a brand to enter the consumer market and gain consumer recognition. This means that making food safety visible to consumers and verifiable by the market has become a critical step for companies in building brand trust.
Qu Dongyu cited the case of aflatoxin contamination in his speech. After the 2012 drought in the U.S. Midwest, aflatoxin contaminated corn, causing economic losses; the same contamination persists in many parts of Africa and South Asia, threatening health and locking farmers out of higher-paying markets.
This case illustrates that food safety risks often originate upstream in the supply chain, but their impact travels down the value chain to the end consumer. Branded agriculture needs to cover the entire chain from production and processing to marketing and distribution; a lapse at any point can escalate into a trust crisis at the consumer end. Therefore, if a brand is to win trust at the consumer end, relying on marketing alone is far from enough. It must translate supply chain transparency into information that consumers can perceive.
Against this backdrop, traceability systems have become a key tool for agricultural brands to build trust. A traceability system refers to the ability to track the history, use, or location of a product or activity through registered identification codes. In the agricultural context, this means that key information at every stage from the source of production to final consumption, including cultivation, processing, warehousing, logistics, and sales, is recorded and linked. Should a problem arise, it can be traced back to the responsible party step by step.
Zixin Group Holdings, an agricultural enterprise that has been engaged in the sweet potato sector for seventeen years, launched its consumer brand NutriRootz in April this year. One of its three product lines is “NutriRootz Raw,” positioned as “high-quality, traceable, nutrient-rich fresh sweet potatoes delivered directly from the farm to consumers and businesses.”
Zixin owns more than 8,200 mu of pollution-free sweet potato cultivation bases and 300 mu of high-quality seedling cultivation bases in Liancheng, Fujian. On the cultivation side, the group provides partner farmers with virus-free seedlings and standardized planting protocols, and prioritizes the purchase of high-quality fresh sweet potatoes that meet its standards.
On the quality control side, the group conducts annual audits and assessments of suppliers, covering product quality, delivery capability, and supply management systems. These upstream controls provide practical support for the “traceable” commitment.
Wesley Han, General Manager of Zixin Group, said the brand needs to clearly communicate the varieties, origins, and processing characteristics of its sweet potatoes to the market, so that supply chain capabilities become the basis for consumers to understand and trust the brand.
For the consumer-facing NutriRootz brand, the significance of “traceable fresh sweet potatoes” lies in translating upstream quality control capabilities into signals that can be understood on the shelf. Consumers do not need to know the scale of Zixin’s bases in Liancheng or its audit processes; they only need to use the product label to confirm where the sweet potatoes they buy come from and how they have been processed.
When a brand cannot directly explain every detail of its supply chain to every consumer, a verifiable traceability system takes on the function of “speaking for the brand.”
From an industry research perspective, the value of traceability systems is also supported by data. A study published in the journal Foods, focusing on traceable fresh produce, found that consumers’ trust in producers and certification bodies directly affects their safety perceptions and willingness to repurchase.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus emphasized that food safety is not an abstract issue: “It is about every meal, every family, every day.” For consumer-facing agricultural enterprises, the starting point of brand trust may lie precisely in making food safety visible, traceable, and verifiable.
