The Rise of Digital Neo-Colonialism

Waltermeowot
Nov 3 · 3 min read

Okay, the title is a little (over) dramatic but hear me out- there is reason to be concerned and thoughtful in our actions. A little over a year ago I stopped working on a startup called Bazzta, we were one of the many early-stage supply chain companies touting blockchain as the solution to proving the providence of commodity goods. It started as an attempt to identify problems in the fashion supply chain and when that proved too opaque, we pivoted to coffee, then to honey (I still believe honey was a good idea) before finally closing up shop. We don’t all make it.

The goal was to inform the consumer about the origin of their goods, and we believed that once informed, they would make better choices. Like most blockchain supply chain startups, we believed we could create a more fair environment for the farmers, that consumers would tip through blockchain, that things would get better for everyone.

There are many startups like this, mostly in the United States or Europe, which promise to help farmers and producers in other parts of the world. The sector has become rather hot and some of the largest companies in the world are now involved. One project with significant traction is IBM’s Food Trust which promises “A new era for the world’s food supply.” Fantastic. But there is another quote from IBM’s Food Trust that should plant a seed of doubt in your mind.

Where data becomes the world’s most essential ingredient. Think about that for a moment.

Two years ago when I started working on Bazzta I was in talks with several European based startups about pooling resources and trying to attract investors. Through them, I found a particular company in Africa that was building machine learning-based supply chain technology for coffee. Their setup was ingenious: coffee farmers would input their beans into the machine, the machine would grade them in real-time using machine learning, and then automatically pay out the farmers with cryptocurrency on the spot.

Wow.

The system was impressive, to say the least, and it seemed, at least in my mind, the promise of Blockchain fulfilled. The system tracked the providence of coffee back to nearly the bean, machine learning built powerful models about the harvest, and farmers were paid out for their crop on the spot and could get a higher price for their coffee thanks to the efficiencies gained by the system. It seemed like a truly fair, equitable, and better system.

Or was it?

As I continued working on Bazzta I always had this machine learning system in mind. We could build similar machines for nearly any kind of crop, work directly with the agricultural cooperatives. We could save farmers from the expensive, exploitative bridge loans they take out to cover the time between harvest and market. I had even more exotic ideas- micro commodity markets where farmers could pre-sell on a global decentralized exchange shares in future harvests, hipsters in San Fransisco could long bespoke coffee strains on decentralized exchanges. Coffee drinkers in Brooklyn could buy and sell fair-trade coffee futures from hipster cafes where tips were sent directly to the farmer. Farmers could take loans out against aficionados in Europe who would back purchases of new equipment in exchange for shares in the crop. MakerDao style stable-coins backed by commodity prices. Everything was possible.

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