Pollutant Emissions In California Production: Complex Supply Chain And Nut Theft Essay.

Nut Industry Supply Chain

Discuss About The Pollutant Emissions In California Production.

California is a major nut growing area in the United States of America. There are expanded open wide areas in the region specifically for the cultivation of nuts. The United States exports nuts to three European countries and gain lot of dollars. Following are the two figures, which depict that the cultivation of nut in California carries high value and consists of a complicated supply chain. This complicated supply chain of Californian nut industry consists o both producers and consumers of nuts by relying largely on the logistics companies. Logistics holds a significant place in the supply chain and it has resulted in the entry of illicit logistics companies. These companies are further linked to such groups who are involved in the practice of illegal purchasing of nuts to cause business loss in the market (Barrows and Frost 2014). This paper will form the basis of the complex supply chain and nut theft in the Californian market.

Fig: Californian nut business in the last two decades

Source: (Black 2017)

Fig: USA nut production

Source: (Bricker 2016)

The Californian nut industry has a complicated supply chain and therefore, the producers, suppliers and other stakeholders find it difficult to control the purchasing and selling process. The walnut supply chain of California consists of farmers, collectors, businesspersons, walnut crackers and importers. The local distributors of the product conduct the selling process within the supply chain of USA. The distributor chain of the nuts includes exporters, wholesalers, distributors and retailers. The role of the exporters is to export the nuts, which are produced by the processors such as fruits and kernels. The next step in the process includes purchasing of the walnuts by the wholesalers and distributors of the distributor chain and trades them to the retailers. The retailers possess shops, cart retailers along with supermarkets. These participants of the supply chain might vary in locations such as the producing area might be different from the processing area (Conlon 2016). Therefore, it is required to rely on the transportation system and the storehouse for easy processing of the nuts.

Fig: USA nut supply chain

Source: (Farrar, Baur and Elliott 2016)

California, the major area of nut cultivation in the United States of America has become highly vulnerable to theft by illicit entry of several other companies. This illegal practice has become quite common not only in the nut industry but also in the entire food-processing sector. The reason behind this is that in the case of nuts, the packets cannot be named or spotted easily with information such as the food packets. The companies, which are involved in the process of stealing nuts, are stronger in terms of technology and economy and surpass the companies from which they are stealing nuts. They have all the opportunity to hack the information of other companies by using innovative technologies. By hacking the system of other companies, they illegally get access to the data such as the quantity of nuts transported, the place where it is being exported or imported and the relevant cost of the entire process. They also have the ability to fake the legal documents of the original companies (Feenstra et al. 2018). The fraud companies get hold of trucks to reach the destination as per the information they got by hacking the company details. In order to hide their illegal practice, the company keeps on changing their drivers to avoid leaking of information. Such fraud companies are spread all over the world and they manage to escape from the radar of US police.

Vulnerability of Californian Nut Supply Chain

Fig: Scenario of Californian nut industry

Source: (Gong et al. 2017)

To calculate the appropriate value of nut forgery in California is not an easy job because there are a number of thefts that are not marked or identified. As per the figure given below, it can be seen that approximately 30 loads of nut cargos were stolen every year. It can be estimated from the company review that around 621, 694 pounds of nuts were stolen in 2015 without any breaking into the companies. Moreover, the frauds divide the stolen nuts within a day to similar groups so that the theft cannot be tracked.

Fig: Nut theft in California

Source: (Harris et al. 2016)

Fig: Approximate value of nut theft in USA

Source: (Lawrence, Travadon and Baumgartner 2015)

Given below is the pictorial representation of the supply chain and logistics companies to depict the approximate cost of nut thefts in California. It is presumed that the companies mentioned in the following diagrams are involved in the illegal nut stealing case. It can be further assumed that the same companies are also involved in the process of producing, selling and delivering nuts in USA. It can be observed from the diagram that the estimated value of stolen nuts reaches at a lump sum amount.

Fig: Estimated value of nuts stolen

Source: as created by the author

Some potential strategies are given below which might be used by the nut companies to prevent future risks of nut theft and the negative impact on the business.

The companies, which are continuously getting vulnerable to nut theft in California should adopt strict strategies to protect their personal information. It will help the companies from leaking of their information about nuts, the related costs, data and time of export and import. The employees of the original nut companies need efficient training so that they can carefully handle the important data of the company. A strong secured system will help the information from being hacked or misplaced (Marvinney 2016).

The logistics and transportation companies used in the export and import process needs to be trustworthy so that they do not betray and leak information to the stealing companies. It is better to use only the old and faithful companies because there is no faith in the new companies.  

The original nut companies who are facing the risk of getting their products stolen by the fraud companies should get hold of their own transportation companies to retain their trust. This acquisition will help in securing the information of the time and location of the nut transportation. The companies will not need to depend on any third party for conducting their business. It would prevent in nut forgery services to the supply chain of the popular companies (Salazar et al. 2017).

Tabular Data of Californian Nut Industry

It is very important for the nut companies to verify and authenticate the background information of the transport companies that they are acquiring. The companies should check the validity of the entire document and carry out some homework behind their back for any kind of secret information. If they find anything inappropriate while researching on the background of the transport companies, not only they will become aware but also inform the police about the illegal activities carried out by the particular companies.

It is not an easy job to eradicate the illegal system of nut stealing in California. Moreover, the group is spread all over the world and until now, the cops have not been able to find a trace of such groups (Smith 2016). It is next to impossible to capture these groups, as they are technically and economically very strong. The following diagram is evidence, which reflects that the strategies that were recommended for the nut companies would save on a large amount of money.

Fig: savings due to fall in theft by 10%

Source: as created by the author

Conclusion

In the light of the above context, it can be concluded that Californian nut industry is on the verge of diminishing due to illegal theft. The stealing companies are spread all around the world and therefore they are hard to catch. This system of black marketing can be mitigated by using the recommended strategies mentioned in the report.

References

Barrows, F.T. and Frost, J.B., 2014. Evaluation of the nutritional quality of co-products from the nut industry, algae and an invertebrate meal for rainbow trout, Oncorhynchus mykiss. Aquaculture, marketing, pp.315-324.

Black, S.F., 2017. San Diego County, California. Jazzybee Verlag.

Bricker, M., 2016. Crop Selection, Cost Analysis, and Irrigation System Design for the Replanting of a Nut Orchard.

Conlon, B., 2016. The Dynamics of Domestic and International Cargo Theft. SMU Sci. & Tech. L. Rev., 19, p.397.

Farrar, J.J., Baur, M.E. and Elliott, S.F., 2016. Adoption of IPM practices in grape, tree fruit, and nut production in the Western United States. Journal of Integrated Pest Management, 7(1).

Feenstra, G., Hardesty, S., Lev, L., Houston, L., King, R. and Joannides, J., 2018. Beyond fresh and direct: exploring the specialty food industry as a market outlet for small-and medium-sized farms. Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, pp.1-11.

Gong, Y., Pegg, R.B., Carr, E.C., Parrish, D.R., Kellett, M.E. and Kerrihard, A.L., 2017. Chemical and nutritive characteristics of tree nut oils available in the US market. European Journal of Lipid Science and Technology, 119(8).

Harris, L.J., Lieberman, V., Mashiana, R.P., Atwill, E., Yang, M., Chandler, J.C., Bisha, B. and Jones, T., 2016. Prevalence and amounts of Salmonella found on raw California inshell pistachios. Journal of food protection, 79(8), pp.1304-1315.

Lawrence, D.P., Travadon, R. and Baumgartner, K., 2015. Diversity of Diaporthe species associated with wood cankers of fruit and nut crops in northern California. Mycologia, 107(5), pp.926-940.

Marvinney, E.M., 2016. A Life Cycle Based Assessment of Energy Use, Greenhouse Gas, and Pollutant Emissions in California Nut Production. University of California, Davis.

Salazar, F., Garcia, S., Lagunas-Solar, M., Pan, Z. and Cullor, J., 2017. Effect of a heat-spray and heat-double spray process using radiofrequency technology and ethanol on inoculated nuts. Journal of Food Civil Engineering.

Smith, S., 2016. The EU almond industry. Agricultural Commodities, 6(3), p.112.