Supply chains have been one of the most sought after areas for blockchain developers and enthusiasts to delve into, as the current system is plagued by a variety of problems, from antiquated record keeping to ethical malpractice.
When one takes into consideration the various channels through which agricultural produce comes to local supermarkets from unknown farm lands, it can be understood the volume of data this process generates; which is spread across multiple silos thereby making finding answers difficult. Not having a comprehensive picture of the supply chain means that buyers and sellers are often not optimally organised and leads to significant inefficiency — in the form of food waste, for example.
In 2011 a UN survey found that approximately 1/3 of all food produced globally is wasted, this wasted food in Sub-Saharan Africa alone would be sufficient to feed 300 million people, and the total cost of this lost food is 1 trillion dollars. Other information found in the survey were a lack of transparency in production practices, falsified labelling (non-organic food being labelled as organic), forced labour, and food safety and inefficiencies in distribution.
Blockchain projects such as Agunity’s Agriledger, Provenance, OriginTrail, Ripe.io, and Blockgrain are working to provide solutions to the issues of untraceability and fragmentation of supply chain information. Ultimately, they hope to create a secure, easily audit-able system that can reduce unnecessary paperwork and improve efficiencies in the verification of processes and transactions.
In addition, projects like Provenance, which is basing most of its business model on increased demand for organic, ethically-sourced food examines the question of how genuine those stickers which state “Fair Trade” or “Cruelty Free” really are. They have successfully run an impressive number of pilot programmes, with one of their most successful projects being tracking fish from Indonesia. The process was simplified to the point that fishermen could log their catches on the blockchain via SMS, with each batch then being tracked through processing and distribution, all the way to the store. With all the steps involved, one of the clear issues here is how many sensors would be required and how exactly the food would be tracked, but at least permissioned blockchains make using fast consensus systems, like Raft, possible.
Blockchain technology is not a magic bullet — despite its revolutionary nature, it will still leave industries with some issues. Interoperability remains a concern, with so many competing projects coming from multiple angles, and the implementation process is not going to be a stroll along the boardwalk. Many of the projects depend on an array of sensors and tagging technologies that may not be in place yet, and that is not going to make it any easier for farmers and the subsequent parties along the supply chain to get this system off the ground.
That being said, there are several companies and platforms working in this sector that it seems inevitable that agriculture will ultimately end up using blockchains in one form or another. While they may start small, with individual cases and on local levels, it may end up being exactly what the industry needs, since parts of the supply chains seem to have skipped over a few key parts of the internet era up until now. Ultimately, the measure of blockchain’s success is how much good it can do, and ideally, it will contribute to a more food-secure, efficient world.
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