Blockchain Impact on Agricultural Supply Chain
Growing up we all learnt the basic necessities of life — food, clothing and shelter. Down the line we learnt that a major portion of our food came from places called farms and even later we learnt that quite a bit of our food comes from far away through a process termed importing. Today we live in a world that features compulsory food labeling that contains seemingly easy to understand nutritional information. In fact, many of us live in a world of plenty with the option to access food from the farthest reaches of the planet through the workings of an almost magical agricultural supply chain.
Yet this is the same world where we come across scandals with horse meat tainting beef, fruits that are pumped full of hormones, poultry that is pumped full of steroids and the list goes on. What’s perhaps worse is that this is just the stuff that we know about, what’s perhaps more worrying is the stuff that we don’t yet know about the food that we put on our table. To put it simply, the problem is one of trust in our food regarding its source, how it was grown, how it was transported and so on. Surprisingly or perhaps unsurprisingly, blockchain technology offers up a few intriguing solutions that can help improve key issues associated with the modern day agricultural supply chain. The following are some possible benefits that the industry can derive from this emerging cutting-edge technology:
Increased Customer Trust
Many around the world have moved away from big chain supermarket shelves to local greengrocers and butchers in search of locally sourced organic food, grass-fed beef and so on. But are they absolutely sure where their food was grown? Blockchain technology can help increase customer trust through its ability to provide immutable digital records that are far superior to traditional paper records. These digital records once created in a blockchain cannot be altered, duplicated or forged and all change requests are logged accurately. This ensures that during your food’s journey from the farm to the table, you never lose track of how your food has been sourced, grown and transported.
Reduced Food Costs
Ever wondered why many sellers risk their reputation and even their customer’s well-being by selling tainted food? The first relatively obvious answer is the greed of higher profits while a secondary answer might easily be that they were duped and are in fact victims too. In both the cases, a possible pain point in your food’s journey from the farm to your plate is multiple levels of intermediaries. This not only adds to the final cost of the food but also increases the time taken for your food to reach you. Here too the ability of blockchain to reduce intermediaries and improve agricultural supply chain efficiency can potentially decrease the cost of food for the end user.
Improved Connectivity among Stakeholders
The journey of food from the farm to your table is a complicated one involving myriad players starting from the farm worker and the buyer to the trucker and the supermarket stocker. This complicated journey features multiple companies and brands working together to achieve a common goal. The use of blockchain encryption enables easy access to relevant business information among stakeholders across different levels of the supply chain. This improved connectivity with the added benefit of secure record keeping can work wonders by bringing together different stakeholders and generating synergies across different part of the existing agricultural supply chain.
