The illicit trade of crop protection products, including counterfeit pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides, poses a significant risk to farming and food safety.
Unregulated products can contain dangerous chemicals, endangering human health, damaging the environment, and undermining food security. The use of counterfeit products also jeopardizes crops, reducing yields and potentially fostering pest and disease resistance.
Driven by high costs of legitimate products and weak regulatory systems, this black market thrives in many regions. Farmers, often unaware of the risks, may turn to these cheaper alternatives, unknowingly harming their land and future productivity.
A key element in combating this growing problem is intelligence gathering. Understanding the supply chains, identifying the sources of counterfeit products, and tracking the movement of these illegal goods are essential for enforcement agencies. Enhanced intelligence helps authorities detect illicit networks early and disrupt their operations before the counterfeit products reach the market.
In other articles, ApiraSol discusses the benefits for crop protection brand owners of implementing a supply chain intelligence program. In the crop protection sector, illicit traders are highly sophisticated and often conceal their real identities in bills of lading. They are also unlikely to accurately declare the products they are trading. In some cases, they may ship a generic product that does not qualify as an infringement, but send branded labels separately. The counterfeit, branded product is then “assembled” in the final stage of the supply chain, minimizing the risk of detection and seizure along the way.
ApiraSol has developed advanced techniques to identify risky supply chains and entities behind them. These solutions can track shipments that do not declare the correct product and uncover complex networks of entities and the people behind.
Such methdologies can only be revealed to brand owners and selected enforcement authorities.
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