On 9 October 2026, a soybean farmer in Poinsett County, Arkansas, gets an email from the grain buyer asking which field the 5,400 bushels delivered on 2 October came from. This is an invented example. The scale ticket carries lot 26-114 (one number per delivery sold). The field log names three fields cut between 29 September and 1 October, with no lot number. Until the farmer answers, the buyer holds the $54,000 payment (5,400 bushels at $10 per bushel). A farmer can name the field of a sold lot only if the same lot number sits on the delivery ticket and on the field-log line of that day. Write that number in both places on the next delivery.
What does the delivery ticket not say?
The ticket names who bought the grain, how much and when. It has no field on it. The log lists the fields that were cut and on which days. It has no delivery for the grain of each field. Each record is complete for its own purpose, and neither carries the number the other needs.
On 9 October, the farmer can try to rebuild the link from memory. Fields 12, 7 and 3 were cut on three days, and the load left on the next. Memory gives an answer, but nothing on paper lets the buyer or the farmer check it. A lot number written a week later looks the same as one written on 2 October.
The Codex Alimentarius, the FAO and WHO food-standards body, describes a tracing system that identifies, at any stage, where the food came from (one step back) and where it went (one step forward). Those guidelines address inspection and certification systems, so they do not oblige a farmer by themselves. For a sold lot, the step forward is the buyer, already on the ticket. The step back is the field, which the ticket does not carry.
Write the same lot number on your copy of the ticket and on the log line, the day the load leaves.
Who asks a farmer for the field?
In the European Union, a deforestation rule (the EUDR, Regulation (EU) 2023/1115) covers seven commodities, soy among them. The European Commission’s 2026 review says the rule applies from 30 December 2026 to all companies except most micro and small operators, which have until 30 June 2027.
The same report says the responsibility now lies with the first operator placing a relevant product on the EU market or exporting it. The Arkansas farmer is not that operator. The buyer who exports the soybeans may still ask the farmer which plots the lot came from, because that information starts on the farm. That expectation is an inference, not text of the regulation.
For micro and small primary operators in countries classified as low-risk, the report allows a postal address instead of geolocation, provided the address clearly corresponds to the location of the plots. Whether that applies to a given farm is a question for the buyer and a lawyer. Under any route, the plot information starts with the farm’s own records.
Ask the buyer what they will want at the next harvest: the field name, the field location or both.
How do I write a load that mixes three fields?
Grain from different fields ends up together. The USDA Economic Research Service (ERS) notes that crops of one type are typically commingled, and that blending begins as soon as farmers deliver to the local elevator. The same report says that tracking units as large as an entire grain silo have poor precision for isolating safety or quality problems.
The farm can still keep its own side precise. Number each sale, not each harvest: one lot number for each delivery that leaves. On the log line of each field in that delivery, write the bushels it supplied. In the example, lot 26-114 holds 5,400 bushels from three fields.
If the bushels on the log lines do not add up to the scale ticket, a field is missing from the lot or a quantity is wrong. Finding that on delivery day takes minutes. Finding it on 9 October takes a search.
Before the next load, list each field in it, with its bushels, on the same line as the lot number.
What does the number buy when someone asks?
The 2006 US spinach outbreak shows what a lot number does and what it does not do. By the ERS account, 204 people became ill across 26 states and Canada. Some of them still had the bag at home, with the firm name and lot number, which gave the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) a head start. The packer’s records then showed that four farms supplied the contaminated batch, and the FDA narrowed its focus to one farm.
Even so, the FDA reached the fields and the processing plant a month after the spinach was harvested. Every spinach grower lost demand, though only one grower’s spinach was contaminated. Five months after the outbreak, the value of retail sales of bagged spinach was still 27% below the same period a year earlier.
The lot number gave a head start, and the records a narrower question: four farms, then one. It did not protect the price. Codex adds that tracing does not in itself improve food safety outcomes unless it is combined with appropriate measures and requirements. The return on writing the number is a smaller question from the buyer and a shorter day answering it. Nothing in these sources says it raises the price.
Keep each field’s input records under the same name as its log line, so the answer for one field is one page.
What do I write first, and how fast must I answer?
Start with the next delivery. Give the load a lot number the day it leaves, and copy the number onto your copy of the ticket. Write it on the log line of every field in the load, with the bushels each supplied. If the grain waits in a bin first, write the same number on the bin record.
Then test it once a year. After harvest, pick a lot already sold and trace it back to its fields with a stopwatch. Mark the place where the number stops: the bin, or a record you cannot find. Fix that place before the next harvest.
A reasonable target is to name every field and its bushels on the day the buyer asks. That target is a recommendation for the farm, not a rule from any source above. Name one person who answers the buyer, and keep the tickets and the log where that person can reach them.
The log line that carries the lot number also carries the date of each operation. Two field jobs, one crew: which one gets the day? covers which operation waits when two want the same day. The buyer’s discount table decides what the load pays after the scale, and Grain discount schedule: price your load before you haul covers it. More on this subject: farm management and the marketing library.