Importance of Blockchain in Agriculture and Food Supply Chain
Agriculture alone held almost 6.4% of the entire global economic production. Around 40% of the global workforce is involved in the agricultural industry, and its worldwide production is more than 5,000,000 million. When the food reaches to the market, it becomes a part of a vast food supply chain where a lot of intermediaries are involved. You may be interested in knowing where your food has been produced and in what conditions.
You only get to know about your food quality when it is served in your plate, and you eat it. Still, with the use-cases of Blockchain in executing contracts and tracking information about the food supply transparently, it could be possible to check the quality of food at the earlier stages.
Blockchain agriculture is one of the most promising use cases that makes the whole supply chain process more straightforward and effective.
ReportLinker revealed that the Blockchain’s stake in agriculture and food supply is expected to touch the mark of USD429.7 million by 2023. ‘Blockchain for Agrifood’ is a project financed by the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality, to explore the Blockchain implications in the field of agrifood. It has also been indicated by several other studies that with Blockchain technology, tracing food throughout the whole supply chain is a matter of a few seconds. Blockchain technology is changing the agriculture industry in several ways, and with Blockchain, maintaining food quality becomes easier.
Key Ways Blockchain is changing the nature of the agriculture sector and supply chain.
- Procurement tracking:- The conventional supply chain is a long process that involves multiple agents which ultimately add high costs to the system, and the process becomes time-consuming. But, Blockchain can simplify the whole process through a single distributed ledger. Blockchain platform provides for direct interaction between commodity buyer and supplier that helps to reduce the time consumed in the conventional process in supply and payments. With this, companies and farmers both can avail the larger share of profit by company saving the additional agent fees and farmers receiving a more considerable amount on sales.
- Crop and Food Production: Blockchain comes with smart features like smart farming that enables IoT sensors that can provide important information like the temperature of the soil, water level, details of fertilizers. Based on such data, Blockchain can trigger smart contracts and execute specific actions. This can help improve the quality of farming and production.
- Weather Crisis Control: Farmers have to deal with unpredictable weather conditions and monitoring and predicting weather can be a significant factor that can ensure better crop survival. With Blockchain, it is possible to predict the weather behavior, which makes requesting insurance and receiving claims by farmers through smart contracts more comfortable and quicker.
- Agricultural Finance Management: Blockchain helps make the agricultural finance process more transparent and fair. Lack of transparency in agreements and complex credit history makes it challenging for smallholders and financial inclusion. Blockchain has enhanced transparency and enabled shared control accessibility.
With Blockchain, you can think about trust, whether it relates to food provenance or trading the production. The underlying promise backing Blockchain is the ability to trust without involving mediators and several other connecting agents. Several Blockchain Professionals in the market can help connecting farms and buyers directly and reduce the involvement of multiple intermediary agents. Looking at the benefits of implementing Blockchain technology not only in agriculture and food supply chain but also in other fields, Blockchain Council is increasing the Blockchain technology globally and holding Blockchain research and development in different areas.
