Blockchain and the Internet of Things (IoT) disrupting Food & Agriculture.
Food-tech opens a new gate of innovative technology which will guide us towards a more transparent way to produce and transport food.
In the last decades we have seen a tremendous increasing wave of mass food production in order to supply the high demand of developed countries. Consumers claim food quality and transparency in the process but, without the ability to track and trace food through the entire supply chain, producers have failed providing meaningful solutions. With the rise of technologies to analyze big data, track and trace products, and intelligent supply chain mapping, many of these problems can be solved with a few sensors and apps in our smartphone. Agricultural and nutritional experts have already identified innovative technologies that would improve not only the quality of the food and the transparency of the process, but it will help us optimizing the resources needed to bring food from the farm to the kitchen while reducing the negative impact on the environment.
In this article we’re going to explore how popular trends like Blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT) have been applied to the food industry from entrepreneurs who want to improve traceability and transparency along the whole food chain giving consumers the opportunity to take more informed choices.
The Internet of Food (IoF)
As the organization Internet of Food states, this is the place “where Internet and food meet together”. As the new wave of the Internet of Things, IoF works performing the same function: connecting people and assets through sensors and devices. By doing that, resources, raw material, transportation, time and pollution among other factors are reduced to the minimum.
Many entrepreneurs like Caleb Harper are implementing this innovative system to the food industry aiming to enhance food properties, reduce food waste and protect common natural resources. Harper explains why and how the Internet of Food will transform the way we produce and consume food in the coming future:
The Internet of the Sea
Moving one step further, three of the biggest seafood-processing companies — Espersen, Icelandic Seachill and Nomad Foods — have applied these innovative concepts to the sea developing thus the so called Internet of the Sea. The project was exposed recently in a workshop organized by FAI Farms to ensure a sustainable future for our fisheries, oceans and fishermens livelihoods.
“To ensure a sustainable future for our fisheries, oceans and fishermens livelihoods we must think beyond todays trawling technology. We need clever, selective harvesting techniques that target sustainable stocks, avoid by-catch and minimize environmental impacts.”— Oistein Thorsen
The Internet of the Sea will reinvent the commercial fishing achieving the next four objectives:
- Harvest high quality and affordable seafood from sustainable fish stocks, today and in the future.
- Reduce or eliminate the negative environmental impact of trawler fishing, including GHG emissions and on damage to the seafloor and to our oceans.
- Only catch the fish we want by improving our ability to target and select particular species and avoid by-catch.
- Generate real and tangible benefits to the fishermen.
The core of this project is based in its capacity to track and analyze relevant data in order to detect for instance locations, species and movements of fish in advance so that, costs, time, fuel and GHG emissions are significantly reduced, lowering the impact on the entire ecosystem.
Blockchain and the agriculture economy
Blockchain technology emphasizes transparent and distributed markets providing better solutions for the agricultural industry. The number of blockchain-based startups increases every day aiming to make food information public, secure and all-inclusive. This innovation monitors all food supply chain collecting data which can be accessed through smartphones and apps enabling consumers to take better choices.
Provenance for example enable you to find real fish “from hook to fork” by collecting informations through sensors. Initiatives like FarmShare use blockchain technology to build strong farm communities in which local food is purchased by local currencies while others like Filament use wireless sensors to monitor crops and records all data on the blockchain to detect damaged crops, broadcast tamper-resistant weather data, machinery protocols, GPS positioning among other important variants.
These new technologies are concrete solutions to many problems that are currently challenging governments and institutions all over the world such as pollution, food waste, low product quality, and reduce diseases and overweight among the world population. A new wave of tech-based applications is disrupting the food & agriculture industry attempting to design a more sustainable and democratic food farming.
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