How to fix food supply chains with blockchain based traceability — Part 3. Economic inequality, and migration caused by climate change
Economic inequality
The problem
Economic inequality is the difference found in various measures of economic well-being among individuals in a group, among groups in a population, or among countries. There are various numerical indices for measuring economic inequality. A widely used index is the Gini coefficient, but there are also many other methods. In the case of the top 21 industrialized countries, counting each person equally, life expectancy is lower in the more unequal countries. The Food Services sector „is the most unequal sector in the American economy, driven by extreme inequality within the fast food industry,” according to Demos policy analyst Catherine Ruetschlin. The second-most unequal sector is retail, according to the report. This is not only the problem in the U.S. but this a global trend. Economic inequality has some important factors:
- income inequality
- inequality to access know-how and high technology
- inequality to access the food retail market
- inequality to access information
How TE-FOOD can help
Traceability as a fair trading tool
Traceability is a very important tool to drive supply chains in direction of fair trading. For example, at the traceability project for shrimps and mud crabs in Ca’Mau province, Vietnam (with around 150,000 local shrimp/crab farmers), the main goal of the government — beside food safety and brand protection — was to exactly map the quality and quantity of farm shipments to local and export markets. That information helps the government to give targeted subsidization from the local tax income and from NGO grants to local farms that will be the first step towards fair trading. A lot of reports by TE-FOOD show exactly the quality and quantity of fresh food products which are very important help for the decision makers to define the target farmers for financial and technological support.
TE-FOOD trainings
Due to the extensive training activity (more than 10,000 people trained in one year) done by the TE-FOOD training team, it is possible to access around 250,000 people working in the agricultural sector in the emerging countries. The basic goal of this training is to teach them how to use the TE-FOOD system, but meanwhile we teach the supply chain members on an emphasized level the farmers — about food safety and how to access wholesalers or retailers directly and even about available new technologies and methodologies in the agricultural sector.
TE-FOOD Marketplace
TE-FOOD Marketplace will help the local farmers to sell their products to new markets through intermediaries or directly to food producers and retailers, to skip intermediary supply chain members without real value added. That will increase the equal allocation of income generated by fresh food industry, further drive it towards fair trade, and can give a fully transparent commercial activity, which can result in higher income for the local farmers in emerging countries.
TE-FOOD Foundation
The unequal sharing of total traceability cost is an additional inequality factor within a supply chain. While most of the identification costs are paid by companies at the beginning of the supply chain (farms), most of the advantages of traceability benefit the companies at the end of the supply chain (wholesalers, retailers). The main goal of TE-FOOD Foundation is to compensate the farmers for the high initial cost of traceability. This will be done by donations (10% of the traceability revenue), as well as by providing tools for the supply chain members to ask for reimbursements from other chain members in return of providing wide range of food safety information. This value added service benefits those companies which provide information which can be helpful for participants in later steps of the chain.
Migration caused by climate change
The problem
Environmental factors have a notable impact on global migration flows, as people have historically left places with harsh or deteriorating conditions. Migration, climate change and the conditions of environment are interrelated. Just as environmental degradation and disasters can cause migration, movement of people can also entail significant effects on surrounding ecosystems. To mitigate the climate change caused migration is an important factor to create and maintain local economical background for people mainly living from agricultural and fishing activities and products.
How TE-FOOD can help
Traceability beyond borders
For the consumers who have conscious buying attitude, TE-FOOD gives a tool to analyse the origins of fresh and frozen products coming from developing countries. Instead of sending aid or even solve the migration demographical problems at a later stage, people can help emerging countries by buying their products, build a stronger local economical background and help them to stay in their country and region.
TE-FOOD is going to implement blockchain, and tokenize its operation. Pre-sale is planned for November, 2017.
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