Blockchain In The Agriculture Space

Produce from tomatoes to Champagne grapes are being tracked through the blockchain

While food culture in the U.S. is decades behind other developed countries, it is evolving to be more sustainable and conscious. Thanks to the “buy local, eat local” phenomena, the presence of Whole Foods markets across the country, and numerous policy initiatives in D.C., Americans are changing their views on how to buy and consume food. While significant progress has been made, the food industry unfortunately is still far from being fully transparent.

Nevertheless, startups have begun to utilize blockchain solutions to help fix the problem and hold farmers, distributors, and restaurants more accountable and motivated to disclose the specifics of food they are growing and selling.

Ripe.io, a San Francisco startup, started using blockchain to tell the complete story about fresh produce. Most recently, Ripe.io tested a pilot program with a farm in Massachusetts and incorporating IoT technology to answer questions about what’s in our food, where has it been and what happens to it.

“There’s a lot of fraud in food origins, especially now that it’s hot. People say ‘this is local,’ or ‘this is organic,’ or ‘this is grown using certain practices.’ With this system, you can prove it.” — Caroline Myran, a project manager for Ripe.io.

While there is lingering hesitation around tracking fresh produce using blockchain, it does seem like a logical, good practice to implement since Americans are becoming more mindful about the food we consume.

However, what seems to be missing is how consumers would be able to easily access the blockchain history behind the food they’re buying and eating.

Think about it: you go to Whole Foods because you know the produce, meats and dairy are all local, organic and/or made with healthy ingredients. Would bringing this concept to scale mean going to a normal market and having to read about every tomato or peach you’re putting into your cart?

Sure, spending time analyzing the origins of food is important, but I’d be interested to see what a partnership would look like between the distillers of the information on the blockchain and the grocers, and the ways big data is filtered to tell the story of one tomato’s journey from the farm to the fork.

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