Patent ID: 7062513

Claim:
A method for tracing the identity of an agricultural product, the method implemented by a computer or another data processor and comprising: acquiring data on an agricultural product associated with a harvesting time to form initial data; transmitting the initial data to an intermediate data processing system associated with a handler of the agricultural product; appending additional data to the initial data received at the intermediate data processing system to form composite data, the additional data comprising two or more of the following: product characteristics data, product treatment data, product storage environmental data, harvesting equipment identifier, harvested load identifier, harvested load time, transport identifier, transport load date, transport load time, transport load date, transportation time, transportation duration, storage facility identifier, storage load time, storage load date, and a processor identifier, a processor delivery date, and a processor delivery time; transmitting the composite data to at least one of a receiver and a reporting data processing system for processing the composite data and transferring the processed data to a data management system; and providing chain-of-custody data on a chain of custody corresponding to the agricultural product to a recipient of the product associated with a destination location, the established chain of custody comprising a list of successive custodians of the product that had custody of the product at corresponding reading times for a product transported from an origination location to the destination location.