When details are important

As the reader will be aware, traceability is an important consideration in our export markets, and increasingly so here at home. If something is questionable in a product, it can be traced back to the farm – even the field – of its origin.

As the reader will be aware, traceability is an important consideration in our export markets, and increasingly so here at home. If something is questionable in a product, it can be traced back to the farm – even the field – of its origin.

It isn’t only consumers who need detail. Producers do too. Precision farming allows them to customise how much water, how much fertiliser etc is needed on all areas of a field, rather than applying a blanket amount as in the last century.

Enter African Mineral Standards (AMIS).

“What is metrological traceability?” we asked Jumien Peceur of AMIS.

“Metrological traceability relates to the property of a measurement result, it can be a bit complicated to explain in an email but let me give it a try”, came the response.

“Any result on our standards, let say for example nitrogen (N) or potassium (K), is traceable from when raw material (poultry feed or whatever it is) come through our doors, in the following sense:

We weight the raw material with a scale that has been calibrated. The scale thus have a calibration certificate so that we know the weight is ~ 100% correct with a ±0.01% margin of error.
After weighing the material it is place into production and at every single step there is a measurement being taken, whether it is temperature, moisture or analytical work. The instruments are calibrated to see if it works correctly and has supporting documentation.
In so doing we reduce the measurement of uncertainty at every single step of production of the reference standard till we reach the point that we actually have a result for N or P and its unit of measure.

“That is what’s meant with metrological traceability to an S.I. unit”.