Like the Chinese saying that a journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step, the Oakton Community College/RFID/ITAGC meeting was a great first step to a long process. RFID experts came to OCC's RFID lab,http://www.oakton.edu/acad/dept/mcs/rfd/ the Illinois Trade Association of Greater Chicago http://www.itagc.org/ contingent turned out, and the OCC folk did a great overview of their lab and its capabilities.
I was truly delighted to have Ernie Redfern of Blommers speak on how they are using RFID to comply with the Bioterrorism Act mandates. RFID is a natural for some industries--food, pharma, and big ticket items. Interestingly enough, they started doing all of this before the pet food disasters. Now, I can only imagine the pressure for a globally transparent traceable food/ag system will increase exponentially for two reasons. On the food safety side, the prices pressures which make importing attractive aren't going away but neither are safety issues. And on the energy/ag side, there will be enormous pressures to integrate the global grain complex so it becomes possible to insure adequate precursor availability for food, fuel and fiber. As an example, I represent farmers and I've been along when they've gotten calls from grain processors to see if they have soy available for crushing. Right now that model works and has worked well for a long time, but I don't think Exxon calls the well head to yell, "got crude?" Now, I know that calls are an exception not the rule, but I wonder who's really thought through what it means to really use grain as an industrial precursor component on the scale that we're currently contemplating. In a world where the savants say Iowa will become a net corn importer, almost anything's possible.
