Empowering Small-Scale Agriculture through Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology: Review and Future Perspectives

Abstract

Agriculture plays an essential role in modern society and still represents the main source of livelihood for most people in low-income and developing countries. According to data provided by the World Bank # ( World Bank, n.d. ), the 2022 rate of employment in agriculture in low-income and least developed countries was respectively 58.8% and 54.2% (global rate was 26.3%). The food demand of a growing global population is now putting strains on small farmers worldwide, and especially those from low- and middle-income countries, who struggle to access markets ( Tripoli and Schmidhuber, 2020 ). The current global food market is indeed dominated by large-scale producers and is therefore complex and risky for small players, as it requires the participation of several intermediaries ( Kamilaris et al., 2019 ; Kumarathunga et al., 2022 ). Access to markets is not the only challenge farmers are facing. The agri-food supply chain is also characterised by transparency and efficiency issues ( Tripoli and Schmidhuber, 2020 ). If on the one hand, consumers demand transparent information about their food purchases ( Rocha et al., 2021 ), then on the other hand, the number of actors involved in the supply chain negatively impacts information flow, limiting traceability and quality control ( Kamilaris et al., 2019 ).