The First Organic-Certified, US Hemp Crop Tracked on the Ethereum Blockchain
Verified Organic and ConsenSys-backed Treum collaborate to track and trace the first commercial hemp crop in Arizona.
The organic food market is worth $40 billion USD. To support this market, the USDA certifies fewer than 100 private inspectors to visit, review, and verify the organic standards of 31,000+ farms and businesses worldwide. When importing organic goods from overseas, the USDA outsources the verification process to international counter-parties, increasing the risk for misrepresentation. It is estimated that by 2025 the organic market in the US alone will be worth over $70 billion USD.
As global demand for organically and sustainably grown products has skyrocketed, so has fraud. Regulators now face a higher burden of ensuring that the products sold to consumers as ‘organic’ truly meet the claims they purport, and consumers are growing wary of conventionally grown produce being passed off as organic. As regulation becomes more stringent, the cost of becoming verified as organic is growing for farmers and food producers. The result is higher-cost organic food on the market and growing access inequality to healthier foods.
Verified Organic, which provides businesses and consumers full transparency to the organic food supply chain, has begun the first phase of tracking organic hemp production for Integrated CBD from seed to sale, using the Ethereum blockchain. The first implementation of this partnership went live on June 7, when Integrated CBD, an Arizona-based, vertically integrated producer of organically grown industrial hemp and cannabidiol (CBD), planted the first commercial hemp seeds in the state of Arizona.
To address the current lack of transparency in the organic supply chain, and bring ease of mind to consumers, Verified Organic has partnered with ConsenSys-backed supply chain platform Treum (formerly Viant.io) to track and trace each step of an organic crop’s production: planting, fertilizing, organic pesticide application, harvesting, extracting, and distribution. Information about these steps are recorded on the Ethereum blockchain and verified with a time, date, and geolocation stamp. Input data will later be corroborated by third-party laboratories and certification bodies, which will issue independent assessments of the product, from soil samples to the hemp plant material itself.
Here’s how it works: To input data about the planting process, Treum developed the Verified Organic Web platform for managers and the mobile application that works online and offline for farmers. Integrated CBD managers can use the Web-enabled blockchain platform to register organic certificates and manage farm assets like seeds, crops, fields, fertilizer, pesticide, and equipment. With its offline functionality, the mobile application enables farmers to continuously capture data, even when Internet connectivity might be poor. Then, data is cryptographically hashed to the public Ethereum blockchain. Because of the immutable and distributed nature of blockchains, users can view and trust the claims about the hemp or resulting CBD oil, from seed to sale.
“On June 7, Integrated CBD’s farming team used the Verified Organic mobile app to record the first hemp seed planting in Yuma County, and it could not have gone smoother,” said Jenny Vatrenko, Verified Organic’s President. “The Treum team’s hard work in building an exceptionally intuitive application ensured that we went live without a hitch. And now the very first hemp crop planted in Arizona since the passing of the Farm Bill is being tracked using Verified Organic, allowing consumers to know exactly what practices went into the growing and processing of Verified Organic CBD.”
According to Jeff Dreyer, Integrated CBD’s COO, “The CBD market is expanding rapidly, and we are looking forward to providing our customers with the highest quality, sustainably grown products available, using Verified Organic’s blockchain technology to foster trust and transparency in our organic farming and extraction process.”
“Blockchain networks enable supply chains to operate with a level of transparency and accountability that consumers have been increasingly demanding, but have previously been unable to attain,” said Joseph Lubin, co-creator of Ethereum and founder of ConsenSys. “ConsenSys is excited about Treum’s partnership with Verified Organic, and looks forward to the re-engineering of trust between mass consumers and global producers who manufacture, trade and distribute the goods we use every day.”
“By leveraging the blockchain infrastructure and applications built by Treum, Verified Organic can now enable organic farmers to bring transparency, fraud reduction and compliance to their supply chain, and to their customers,” said Tyler Mulvihill, co-founder of Treum.
“We’re already beginning to work on the next phases of development to support the verifiable provenance of CBD oil, following the harvest, bale, extraction and processing of the farmed hemp,” noted Anoop Agarwal, adoption leader at Treum.
Patrick Horsman, Integrated CBD’s CEO, said, “Given the largely unsubstantiated claims made by many CBD producers, we look forward to bringing transparency of provenance to the industry and substantiating our organic growing and processing claims with Verified Organic. Consumers want to know what’s in their food and how it’s made, and we are proud to be working with Verified Organic and Treum to make it happen, first in hemp and eventually across all food industry segments.”
About Verified Organic:
Verified Organic is an Ethereum-based blockchain application designed to bring transparency and accountability to the organic food production process, from farm to table. To learn more, visit https://www.verifiedorganic.io.
About Treum:
Treum (formerly known as Viant) is a blockchain company bringing transparency, traceability and tradeability to its customers supply chains. Asset and industry agnostic, Treum works with customers across various industries; Food, Consumer Products, Oil & Gas, Healthcare, Luxury Goods, Energy, Land and Art. To learn more, visit https://www. treum.io.
About Integrated CBD:
Integrated CBD is an Arizona-based vertically integrated, institutional quality and scale supplier of organically grown hemp-derived CBD oil and isolate. To learn more, visit https://www.integrated-cbd.com.
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Disclaimer. The views, information, and opinions expressed are solely those by the author above do not necessarily represent the views of Consensys AG. They are meant for informational purposes only, are not intended to serve as a recommendation or investment advice to buy or sell any securities, cryptoassets, or other financial products.
