EU-funded SmartAgriHubs flagship innovation experiments deployed: Trace Labs driving radical transparency and trust in agri-food supply chains with OriginTrail and Oracle Blockchain Platform
Transparency and trust are crucial for well-performing and sustainable agri-food supply chains. Yet, in too many food supply chains both are lacking. The Trace Labs team has successfully completed two pilot projects at the end of 2020 that are driving radical transparency and process optimization by enhancing trust in agri-food supply chains with the use of distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) and blockchain — the OriginTrail Decentralized Knowledge Graph and the Oracle Blockchain Platform (OBP).
In the first pilot, a decentralized web application was implemented to show the provenance of poultry meat to the consumers. In the second, DLTs were used to set up automated trusted payments of milk to help optimize a dairy supply chain. Both pilots were executed as part of flagship innovation experiments within SmartAgriHubs (SAH), the largest EU-funded project focusing on digitizing the European agri-food sector.
Almost one-third of global food manufacturers cannot guarantee that the ingredients they use are not fraudulent. The root cause is insufficient data exchange due to a lack of trust between different organisations. As such, data is often stored in silos at every point in the supply chain, which is a barrier to effective traceability if a recall requires immediate action or if food brands want to, for example, transparently communicate food provenance to their consumers.
Trace Labs is actively tackling this problem with unique solutions built on the open-source OriginTrail protocol. With the use of the OriginTrail protocol, crucial data from stakeholders across the supply chains is able to be connected and secured from manipulation through blockchain technology. Trusted and connected data is then used in different web applications to improve traceability of products, increase trust, and help optimize every stage of the supply chain management process.
When a problem such as contamination is discovered, the solution enables quick discovery of the product trail end-to-end. With all the data interconnected and accessible, it is easier to track and trace the root cause of any problem that may occur. This drives down the costs of recalls and prevents food waste. The solution also provides an excellent technological infrastructure for deploying other kinds of trusted solutions for optimizing agri-food value chains, like trusted and automated payments based on laboratory test results in dairy and other value chains.
Increasing transparency towards poultry consumers
Food provenance and animal welfare are important information for consumers, who are willing to pay more for higher welfare products if they can be confident of where their food comes from and the animal welfare standards used. This is something that Perutnina Ptuj, the largest poultry producer in Southeastern Europe, is well aware of. That is why they partnered with Trace Labs to launch a web-based provenance application for their premium poultry range. In the spring of 2019, Perutnina Ptuj launched the first version of the application using the OriginTrail Decentralized Network (ODN), a public permissionless DLT network, to exchange and store data as well as blockchain technologies to secure overall data immutability. Through the use of this application, consumers purchasing Perutnina Ptuj’s packaged products from their Natur Premium poultry breeding range could be certain of the local origin of the products and learn more about breeders and conditions on the farms by using their smartphones.
In terms of the applications specifics, each product was equipped with a QR code, which can easily be scanned with any smartphone. Once a consumer scans the code, they are directed to a web-based interface where they are prompted to enter the expiration date of their product and the product LOT number indicated on the packaging. The exact location of the farm where the poultry for their product was bred and a description of the breeder is then displayed to the consumer. They can learn more about the farm, the specifics of the poultry-friendly breeding practices, see the location of the farm on the map and also check the data presented there on the blockchain. The food brand can also place additional information in the application, such as the brand’s social media channels and similar to further enhance their marketing efforts.
As part of the pilot, Trace Labs further developed the application since its first release and also integrated it with a Kakaxi remote sensing IoT device and camera. This provides the food brand with additional data and information (humidity, temperature, rainfall, sunlight, time-lapse pictures from the farms) that can be used as tools for marketing and communication with the consumers. The distance each batch of poultry has travelled from the farm to the abattoir is also included in the interface to provide the consumer with information about the impact of their food on the environment.
Since the goal of this application is to increase transparency and trust of consumers in the food Perutnina Ptuj provides to them, it is in the interest of the food brand owner that all of the data and information available in the application is publicly available and verifiable. That is why all of the data is stored in the public OriginTrail Decentralized Knowledge Graph (DKG) on the ODN. This means that anyone can easily search for the information on the ODN and verify it personally.
However, not all business processes in agri-food supply chains require such transparency. On the contrary, sometimes it is essential that certain information is kept confidential for various reasons, for example contractual or other business-sensitive information. Or, that it is only exchanged and accessible to certain partners within a value chain. Trace Labs’ technology offers a solution in these cases as well as shown by the pilot conducted in the dairy value chain.
Helping a dairy value chain optimize their payment processes
Milk payment is a complex process and the price of milk paid to a farmer depends on multiple factors. The quality of the milk, the quantity of the shipment, farm size, and negotiated margins all play a part in every single delivery that farmers make. Additionally, these deliveries are taken in and processed by different organizations, like farmers, agricultural cooperatives, dairies, and testing laboratories. All of this means that the current way of handling payments towards the farmers still involves significant manual effort to verify all inputs and ensure the right process is respected.
To help optimize this process, Trace Labs employed the same underlying OriginTrail DLT but utilizing an additional, permissioned blockchain. It paired OriginTrail with the smart contract capabilities of Oracle Hyperledger Fabric to deliver a solution that showcases how blockchain-based technologies can improve efficiency, safety, and trust in food supply chains without interrupting the existing business processes.
For this pilot, Trace Labs partnered with Agricultural Cooperative Šaleška Dolina (KZŠD) in Slovenia, an agricultural cooperative with 200+ member farmers delivering milk to one of the largest dairies in the region.
In their existing payment process, it is the dairy they deliver the milk to that calculates the price of milk based on laboratory test results and shares that input with KZŠD together with the test results. The cooperative then manually validates the input received from the dairy before entering the inputs into their ERP. After that, the terms for each farmer are validated with the contract provisions, the cooperative’s margin is deducted, and the final compensation is created.
Although the cooperative has the data on milk volumes and receives the laboratory test results, they lack a fully trusted and automated system that would perform verifiable calculations and produce an integrity-assured data provenance log. This creates a trust gap among the farmers, the cooperative, and the dairy. A gap that can be effectively overcome with decentralized technology, based on the OriginTrail DKG and Oracle Hyperledger Fabric.
Using the two systems, the milk payment mechanism that Trace Labs developed enables an automatic calculation of payments due to each of the farmers based on the trusted milk data stored on the ODN and the contractual data stored in a Hyperledger Fabric smart contract deployed using Oracle Blockchain Platform (OBP).
Notably, the new system in no way changes the current IT landscape, nor the existing business processes. Rather, it treats both as key data sources and a starting point for improvement. Each of the involved IT systems (the dairy ERP, the cooperative ERP, and the cooperative contractual data) exports data in its existing format. Trace Labs’ solution restructures the data for interoperability and prepares it for publishing on the OriginTrail DKG.
Since a lot of the included data is very business-sensitive, data access control and permissioning is handled with great care. Critical data is kept in the secure private store of the OriginTrail node subgraph with only key integrity-assuring data points published to the public DKG (metadata for indexing and cryptographic proofs for data validation). Once the cooperative is ready to make the payment, the required payment data is taken out of Oracle Hyperledger Fabric blockchain and restructured into a payment file that can be uploaded for issuing SEPA payments with the bank.
Combining all components, Trace Labs was able to entirely automate the payment system by simultaneously increasing the integrity level of the entire process and the accountability of each supply chain partner for the parts that they are responsible for.
OriginTrail — combining data integrity, confidentiality and connectivity for supply chain transparency and trust
With the two pilot projects, Trace Labs showcased the versatility of the OriginTrail DLT in driving transparency and trust in agri-food supply chains as well as supply chain optimization with trusted data exchange. The implemented solutions prove that effective and efficient blockchain solutions can be built on top of existing IT infrastructure. There was no need for costly rip-and-replace of existing IT infrastructure at any of the stakeholders in the respective value chains when implementing the solutions.
Importantly, by enabling the users of the solutions to combine both the integrity of public networks and the confidentiality of private ones, depending on their business needs, Trace Labs ensures that agri-food stakeholders are able to extract tangible benefits from using blockchain-based technologies. Namely, making sure their supply chains are more efficient, more transparent, and more sustainable. All things which increase the long-term viability of their business and allow for a greater value proposition.
Interested to learn how Trace Labs solutions could help optimize your business? Reach out to office@tracelabs.io.
About SmartAgriHubs
SmartAgriHubs is a EUR 20 million EU project under the Horizon 2020 instrument and brings together a consortium of well over 160 partners in the European agri-food sector. The project aims to realize the digitization of European agriculture by fostering an agricultural innovation ecosystem dedicated to excellence, sustainability, and success.
About Trace Labs
Trace Labs is a blockchain company developing enterprise solutions for trusted data exchange across the supply chain. Their solutions enable forward-thinking organizations to gain the most knowledge possible and make better decisions based on interconnected data from their supply chains. Trace Labs is also the core development company of the open-source OriginTrail protocol for blockchain-based data exchange.
Founded in 2013, Trace Labs has built award-winning enterprise solutions for supply chains, including those for traceability and verifiable claims. In 2017, Trace Labs received an award from the Walmart Food Safety Collaboration Center. Trace Labs believes sustainable supply chains are only possible when all organizations, big or small, are allowed to benefit from trusted data exchanges.
For more information about Trace Labs, please visit: tracelabs.io.
About OriginTrail
OriginTrail is an ecosystem dedicated to making global supply chains work together by enabling a universal, collaborative, and trusted data exchange.
Today, OriginTrail ecosystem brings trusted data sharing to global supply chains, including Fortune 500 companies in multiple sectors. Good practices show in supporting provenance and sustainability with evident results for businesses, consumers, and the environment, such as preventing counterfeits or tracking food sources.
By using the OriginTrail Decentralized Network (ODN) in inter-organizational environments, companies are achieving the highest data integrity and validation. And based on globally recognized standards and powerful graph data structures, they get end-to-end visibility of their supply chains.
Stemming from hands-on experience and tech advancements, the ecosystem builds on principles of neutrality, inclusiveness, and usability and contributes to more transparent, collaborative, fair, and trusted global supply chains. As an open-source blockchain-based technology paving the way to large-scale adoption, OriginTrail protocol is attracting the interest of the researchers, public institutions, and government decision-makers on an international level.
For more information about OriginTrail, please visit: origintrail.io.
