Importance Of Blockchain In The Food Supply Chain And Agriculture

Yashasvi Gupta
3 min readDec 29, 2020

Almost 6.4 percent of all global economic activity was held by agriculture alone. The agricultural industry accounts for about 40 percent of the world’s workers, and its annual production is over 5,000,000 million. It becomes part of a large food supply chain when the food hits the market, where a lot of intermediaries are involved. You may be interested in knowing where and in what circumstances your food was made.

You only get to know the consistency of your food when it’s served on your plate and you eat it. Nevertheless, with the use of Blockchain in the execution of contracts and the clear monitoring of food supply details, it may be possible to verify the quality of food at an earlier level.

One of the most interesting use cases is blockchain agriculture, which makes the entire supply chain process easier and more effective.

ReportLinker revealed that by 2023, the stake of the Blockchain in agriculture and food supply is projected to hit the USD 429.7 million mark. ‘Blockchain for Agrifood’ is a project sponsored by the Netherlands Ministry of Agriculture, Ecology and Food Safety to explore the implications of Blockchain for agrifood. Several other studies have also suggested that it is a matter of a few seconds to track food across the entire supply chain with Blockchain technology. Blockchain technology is transforming the agricultural industry in a variety of ways, and it is easier to sustain food quality with Blockchain.

Main Ways Blockchain is changing the essence of the supply chain and agriculture sector.

Tracking procurement:- The traditional supply chain is a lengthy process involving several agents that eventually add high costs to the system, and time-consuming procedures. But, via a single distributed ledger, Blockchain will simplify the entire operation. The Blockchain platform allows for direct contact between the purchaser of goods and the seller, helping to reduce the time spent on supply and payments in the traditional process. Through this, businesses and farmers will both take advantage of the greater share of profit by saving the extra agent fees and earning a more substantial amount of revenue from farmers.

Development of crops and food: Blockchain comes with smart features such as smart farming that enables IoT sensors that can provide important information such as soil temperature, water level, fertilizer data. Blockchain can activate smart contracts on the basis of such data and perform specific actions. This will help to boost agricultural and manufacturing efficiency.

Weather Disaster Control: Farmers have to deal with volatile weather conditions, and a significant factor that can ensure better crop survival can be monitoring and forecasting weather. With Blockchain, weather activity can be predicted, which makes it more convenient and easier to request insurance and collect claims from farmers via smart contracts.

Management of Agricultural Finance: Blockchain helps make the process of agricultural finance more open and fair. It is difficult for smallholders and financial inclusion because of a lack of clarity in agreements and complicated credit history. Blockchain increased transparency and allowed usability for shared power.

With Blockchain, whether it relates to food provenance or trade-in production, you can think about confidence. The underlying promise that Blockchain promotes is the ability to trust without mediators and several other connecting agents being involved. Multiple Blockchain professionals on the market may help directly link farms and buyers and reduce the participation of multiple intermediary agents. In view of the advantages of incorporating Blockchain technology not only in agriculture and the food supply chain, but also in other fields, the Blockchain Council is growing Blockchain technology globally and is undertaking research and development of Blockchain in various fields.

--

--