Blockchain Papers

Luona Song, Xiaojuan Wang, Peng Wei, Zikui Lu · 6 authors

Blockchain is an emerging decentralized distributed technology that can cross the boundaries and guarantee safe and trustworthy value transfers between participants. Combining the blockchain technology with the Internet of Things (IoT) technology to enhance the transparency and sustainability of agricultural supply chains, has attracted researchers from both academia and industry. This paper reviews the latest applications of the blockchain and IoT technologies in the sustainable agricultural supply chain management and explores the design and implementation of a blockchain-based sustainable solution. By placing the sustainable agricultural supply chain management at its core, a blockchain-based framework is designed. Considering the heterogeneity of the transaction data and the IoT data, the openness of sustainability information and the sensitivity of participants’ data, a double-chain structure is proposed including the consensus method, the transaction mechanisms, the sustainability assessment method and the performance optimization strategy. The sustainable management practices of all participants are introduced into the blockchain network, especially those allowing the government to play a more significant role in agriculture supply management. Meanwhile, to meet the scenario requirements, a data reduction method is designed to improve performance and reduce block size. Simulations are performed to evaluate the latency, throughput, costs and efficiency of the proposed structure. This paper can be a useful reference for further research on the application of blockchain and IoT technologies in sustainable agricultural management.

Inessa Tyan, Mariemma I. Yagüe, Antonio Jesús Guevara Plaza

Abstract Achieving sustainable tourism is a process that focuses on numerous goals and faces many challenges. The advent of disruptive technology like blockchain could help to tackle some challenges in sustainable tourism development and address its goals. This conceptual paper aims to discuss how blockchain technology could contribute to sustainable tourism. Precisely, the authors investigate the potential benefits of blockchain technology to disrupt tourism operations and boost local economy, manage food supply chain and mitigate food waste, achieve tourists’ satisfaction, affect the tourists’ sustainable behaviour, and address awareness rise issues. The authors conclude that blockchain technology has a potential to contribute to sustainable tourism development as well as the SDGs and propose the directions for future research.

Ratna Ekawati, Yandra Arkeman, Suprihatin Suprihatin, Titi Candra

The white crystal sugar agro-industry is an industry with dynamic characteristics characterized by a sustainable relationship between actors ranging from farmers to consumers. An inefficient supply chain system will affect the flow of products, information, and finance because many actors are involved and have influence. Hence, complicating the system in the tracking process flow, product flow and creating problems that occur in business processes. The main objective of this research is to propose the design of an integrated white crystal sugar agro-industrial supply chain system based on blockchain technology so that it can increase competitiveness in realizing food security and resilience; by proposing a search for the problem of mismatches that occur along the supply chain from upstream to downstream. The variables that will be identified in the supply chain flow include quality, quantity, and price, with the suitability of transaction information data ranging from farmers, sugar factories, warehouses, distribution, retailers to the final consumer. It is hoped that consumers will feel happy to consume trusted local sugar with the best safety and quality, as well as ensure transparency of information between actors. Previous traditional methods, which were still centralized, would be transformed into decentralized information, to create trust among stakeholders. With a blockchain-based traceability architecture design, it is hoped that the proposed design can be implemented in the white crystal sugar agro-industry.

Akshay Patidar, Monica Sharma, Rajeev Agrawal, Kuldip Singh Sangwan

No abstract is available for this record.

Andreas Sendros, George Drosatos, Pavlos S. Efraimidis, Nestor C. Tsirliganis

Blockchain is a distributed, immutable ledger technology initially developed to secure cryptocurrency transactions. Following its revolutionary use in cryptocurrencies, blockchain solutions are now being proposed to address various problems in different domains, and it is currently one of the most “disruptive” technologies. This paper presents a scoping review of the scientific literature for exploring the current research area of blockchain applications in the agricultural sector. The aim is to identify the service areas of agriculture where blockchain is used, the blockchain technology used, the data stored in it, its combination with external databases, the reason it is used, and the variety of agricultural products, as well as the level of maturity of the respective approaches. The study follows the PRISMA-ScR methodology. The purpose of conducting these scoping reviews is to identify the evidence in this field and clarify the key concepts. The literature search was conducted in April 2021 using Scopus and Google Scholar, and a systematic selection process identified 104 research articles for detailed study. Our findings show that in the field, although still in the early stages, with the majority of the studies in the design phase, several experiments have been conducted, so a significant percentage of the work is in the implementation or piloting phase. Finally, our research shows that the use of blockchain in this domain mainly concerns the integrity of agricultural production records, the monitoring of production steps, and the monitoring of products. However, other varied and remarkable blockchain applications include incentive mechanisms, a circular economy, data privacy, product certification, and reputation systems. This study is the first scoping review in this area, following a formal systematic literature review methodology and answering research questions that have not yet been addressed.

Luisanna Cocco, Katiuscia Mannaro, Roberto Tonelli, Lorena Mariani · 8 authors

In this paper we present a blockchain based system for the supply chain management of a particular Italian bread. Goal of the system is to guarantee a transparent and auditable traceability of the Carasau bread where each actor of the supply chain can verify the quality of the products and the conformity to the normative about the hygienic-sanitary conditions along the chain. To realize this system we relied on the Blockchain and the Internet of Thing technologies in order to provide a trustless environment, in which trust is placed in cryptography, in mathematical operations and on the network, and not in public or private companies. Thanks to the use of digital technologies the system aims to reduce the data entry errors and the risk of tampering. Our system is designed so that along the supply chain, the nodes equipped with several sensors directly communicate their data to Raspberry Pi units that elaborate and transmit them to Interplanetary File System and to the Ethereum Blockchain. Furthermore, we designed ad hoc Radio Frequency Identification and Near Field communication tags to shortly supply the proposed system with information about the products and batches. The dedicated RFID tags robustness during on-bread operation was numerically tested. The system will easily allow end consumers to have a transparent view on the whole journey from raw material to purchased final product and a supervisory authority to perform online inspections on the products’ quality and on the good working practices.

Sabir Hussain Awan, Sheeraz Ahmed, Fasee Ullah, Asif Nawaz · 9 authors

Agricultural food production is projected to be 70% higher by 2050 than it is today, with the world population rising to more than 9 billion, 34% higher than it is now. The farmers have been forced to produce more with the same resources. This pressure means that optimizing productivity is one of the main objectives of the producers but also in a sustainable way. Not only does agriculture face a decline in production, but it has also had to face limitations in data collection, storing, securing, and sharing, climate change, increases in input prices, traditional food supply chain systems where there is no direct connection between the farmer and the buyer, and limitations on energy use. Existing IoT‐based agriculture systems have a centralized format and operate in isolation, leaving room for unresolved issues and major concerns, including data security, manipulation, and single failure points. This paper proposes a futuristic IoT with a blockchain model to meet these challenges. Further, this paper also proposes and novel energy‐efficient clustering IoT‐based agriculture protocol for lower energy consumption and network stability and compares its results with its counterpart low‐energy adoptive clustering hierarchy (LEACH) protocol. The simulation results show that the proposed protocol network stability is 23% higher as compared to LEACH as first node of LEACH dies at 168 rounds while IoT‐based agriculture first node dies after 463 rounds. Similarly, IoT‐based agriculture protocol energy consumption is 68% lower than that of LEACH. The proposed protocol also extends the network life to more rounds and demonstrates an increase of 112%.

Xinting Yang, Mengqi Li, Huajing Yu, Mingting Wang · 6 authors

Traditional traceability system has problems of centralized management, opaque information, untrustworthy data, and easy generation of information islands. To solve the above problems, this paper designs a traceability system based on blockchain technology for storage and query of product information in supply chain of agricultural products. Leveraging the characteristics of decentralization, tamper-proof and traceability of blockchain technology, the transparency and credibility of traceability information increased. A dual storage structure of “database + blockchain” on-chain and off-chain traceability information is constructed to reduce load pressure of the chain and realize efficient information query. Blockchain technology combined with cryptography is proposed to realize the safe sharing of private information in the blockchain network. In addition, we design a reputation-based smart contract to incentivize network nodes to upload traceability data. Furthermore, we provide performance analysis and practical application, the results show that our system improves the query efficiency and the security of private information, guarantees the authenticity and reliability of data in supply chain management, and meets actual application requirements.

Zeinab Shahbazi, Yung-Cheol Byun

One of the essential points of food manufacturing in the industry and shelf life of the products is to improve the food traceability system. In recent years, the food traceability mechanism has become one of the emerging blockchain applications in order to improve the anti-counterfeiting area’s quality. Many food manufacturing systems have a low level of readability, scalability, and data accuracy. Similarly, this process is complicated in the supply chain and needs a lot of time for processing. The blockchain system creates a new ontology in the traceability system supply chain to deal with these issues. In this paper, a blockchain machine learning-based food traceability system (BMLFTS) is proposed in order to combine the new extension in blockchain, Machine Learning technology (ML), and fuzzy logic traceability system that is based on the shelf life management system for manipulating perishable food. The blockchain technology in the proposed system has been developed in order to address light-weight, evaporation, warehouse transactions, or shipping time. The blockchain data flow is designed to show the extension of ML at the level of food traceability. Finally, reliable and accurate data are used in a supply chain to improve shelf life.

Sm Al-Amin, Shipra Rani Sharkar, M. Shamim Kaiser, Milon Biswas

Considering the overall situations of cultivator’s economic degradation, food safety chain issue, and whole food supply chain, newer technologies are emerging in the field of agriculture over time. If we look at third world countries, these traditional food supply chains still play the main bearish down prediction. For the result, if any customer deceived by adulterated foods, then in most cases, he/she could not get the original source of the food where it was produced or processed. And in this case, also the administration cannot make this possible to identify and punish the fraudsters. This is where the fraudsters get the opportunity to mix adulteration in foods, put new expiration on expired foods, and release them in the market. Again because of the lack of efficient distribution facilities between cultivators and industrial or last stage vendors, most of the cases cultivators could not get fair pay. And to solve this problem and set explicit or trustworthy communications, the civilization needed immutable and trustworthy technology so that all these problems can be solved. And in that stage, blockchain comes to the picture. In this research paper, we propose an effective, efficient, and satisfactory model or system and service solution to agro traders and also a food traceability system based on blockchain and the help of IoT to make their business more smart and rich. And through the blockchain, smart contract, and the help of IoT sensors, we tried to do maximum effort to reduce human intervention.

Shu Xu, Xiye Zhao, Zhe Liu

Abstract The establishment of food traceability supply chain is an effective way to solve the problem of food safety. But the cost of operating traditional food traceability supply chain system is high. The enterprise on the chain are not willing to participate, and the data on the chain is easy to falsified, which leads to the existence of food traceability and the lack of consumers’ willingness to buy for it. Based on this, solving the high cost in the technical point has become a feasible meaning. Introducing blockchain technology into food safety traceability can improve brand reputation, maintain market and consumer confidence, improve supply chain management, accelerate product and reduce liability risk. In this paper, from the compatibility of block technology and food traceability supply chain, it is concluded that the introduction of blockchain technology will reduce the transaction cost, quality cost, time cost, activity cost, and supply chain traceability additional cost in the food supply chain cost. By comparing with the application cost of block chain technology, this paper explores the cost control mechanism of food traceability supply chain based on block chain, so as to promote the development of food traceability supply chain. The application of blockchain technology in food traceability supply chain will improve the food traceability supply chain system.

Nir Kshetri, Joanna F. DeFranco

The use of blockchain in food and beverage supply chains may offer benefits by improving food safety, supplier reputation, the visibility of small farmers, efficiency in tracing food contamination sources, transparency, and accountability.

Kevin Gordillo Orjuela, Paulo Alonso Gaona-García, Carlos Montenegro

In recent years an effort has been made to improve supply chain management (SCM) and traceability control in different industrial sectors, for example, in agriculture one of the main concerns is about to know where is the product in particular moment and where it will be next. Problem here is, as many other systems, the centralisation of information and trust problems derived from human interaction with transactions in the system. Based on this context of lack of trust, we propose the design and development of a platform using a database based on Blockchain technologies, the platform’s main effort is to propose a solution for agriculture SCM and control over internet taking as study case Colombian agriculture negotiation process.

Abderahman Rejeb, John G. Keogh, Suhaiza Zailani, Horst Treiblmaier · 5 authors

Blockchain technology has emerged as a promising technology with far-reaching implications for the food industry. The combination of immutability, enhanced visibility, transparency and data integrity provides numerous benefits that improve trust in extended food supply chains (FSCs). Blockchain can enhance traceability, enable more efficient recall and aids in risk reduction of counterfeits and other forms of illicit trade. Moreover, blockchain can enhance the integrity of credence claims such as sustainably sourced, organic or faith-based claims such as kosher or halal by integrating the authoritative source of the claim (e.g., the certification body or certification owner) into the blockchain to verify the claim integrity and reassure business customers and end consumers. Despite the promises and market hype, a comprehensive overview of the potential benefits and challenges of blockchain in FSCs is still missing. To bridge this knowledge gap, we present the findings from a systematic review and bibliometric analysis of sixty-one (61) journal articles and synthesize existing research. The main benefits of blockchain technology in FCSs are improved food traceability, enhanced collaboration, operational efficiencies and streamlined food trading processes. Potential challenges include technical, organizational and regulatory issues. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our research and present several ideas for future research.

Panagiota Katsikouli, Amelie Sina Wilde, Nicola Dragoni, Henning Høgh‐Jensen

The expansion of the food industry, within and beyond national borders, has resulted in complex collaborative networks and supply chains. The management culture adopted for food supply chains has an impact on the quality of the end product and the vitality of the businesses involved. In this report, we focus on the use of blockchain technology, and distributed ledgers in general, for managing supply chains in the food and agricultural sectors. We explore the challenges with which typical management systems are faced, such as food safety, food fraud, and inefficient processes, as well as ethical aspects like fair trade, animal welfare, and the environmental impact of food production. The use of blockchain-based systems for managing a supply chain offers significant benefits, such as faster and more reliable traceability. Our analysis, involving small and medium enterprises (SMEs) from Denmark, highlights that SMEs could benefit from blockchain-based systems that encourage fair trade and authenticity documentation, expose good practices, and decrease management costs. However, due to a lack of important policies and standards, and due to the limited understanding of the technology itself, its large-scale adoption is at the moment immature. © 2020 Society of Chemical Industry.

Mireille van Hilten, Guido Ongena, Pascal Ravesteijn

Purpose – This article evaluates the application of Blockchain technology to improve organic or fair-trade food traceability from ‘Farm to Fork’ in light of European regulations. This study aims to shed light on the challenges in the organic food chain to overcome, the drivers for Blockchain technology and the challenges in current projects. Design/methodology/approach – For this research a case study approach was taken in which four Blockchain projects were evaluated on their success. Findings - Organic food supply chain companies aiming to improve food traceability, with Blockchain face two key decisions, depending on the characteristics of the organic value chain in regard to (1) optimizing chain partner collaboration and (2) the selection of which data to capture in the Blockchain. Other challenges were data confidentiality, validation of data inputs and interoperability. Easy verification of certification data, accountability, improved risk management, insight into trade transactions, simplified data collection and exchange and improved communication account for the benefits. Regardless of what drives companies towards whole chain traceability, for example customer satisfaction, it does not necessarily require Blockchain technology. Blockchain does enable faster food traceability. which is expected to be more applicable to a complex food supply chain. Research limitations/implications – The limitations of this study are represented mainly by the scarcity of organic blockchain projects aiming to minimize pesticide inputs and limited availability of information of commercial projects. Practical implications – This study shows that Blockchain is currently successfully being implemented on a small scale to create whole chain traceability of organic and fair-trade food. Originality/value - This research addresses the intersection of food supply chain and organic food quality and certification. The focus on origin information and importance of organic data elements may underpin other research on EU regulations in relation to food traceability, adding value to the body of knowledge on the current status of Blockchain technology.

Niccolò Patelli, Mauro Mandrioli

Distributed ledgers are becoming commonly used technologies to trace agrifood supply chains in view of their safety, immutability, transparency, and scalability. In the present review, we discuss the most relevant case studies of agrifood supply chain traceability using blockchain (BC) and other distributed ledgers technologies. Considering that each supply chain actually has specific requests of traceability, we here suggest a logical scheme in order to favor the identification of the BC structure that is more appropriate for each agrifood supply chain, including the identification of supply chains where complex BC technologies are actually not necessary.

Juan José Bullón Pérez, Araceli Queiruga‐Dios, Víctor Gayoso Martínez, A. Martı́n del Rey

Traceability and monitoring of industrial processes are becoming more important to assure the value of final products. Blockchain technology emerged as part of a movement linked to criptocurrencies and the Internet of Things, providing nice-to-have features such as traceability, authenticity and security to sectors willing to use this technology. In the retail industry, blockchain offers users the possibility to monitor details about time and place of elaboration, the origin of raw materials, the quality of materials involved in the manufacturing processes, information on the people or companies that work on it, etc. It allows to control and monitor textile articles, from their production or importing initial steps, up to their acquisition by the end consumer, using the blockchain as a means of tracking and identification during the whole process. This technology can also be used by the apparel industry in general and, more specifically, for ready-to-wear clothing, for tracing suppliers and customers along the entire logistics chain. The goal of this paper is to introduce the more recent traceability schemes for the apparel industry together with the proposal of a framework for ready-to-wear clothing which allows to ensure the transparency in the supply chain, clothing authenticity, reliability and integrity, and validity of the retail final products, and of the elements that compose the whole supply chain. In order to illustrate the proposal, a case study on a women’s shirt from an apparel and fashion company, where a private and open blockchain is used for tracing the product, is included. Blockchain actors are proposed for each product stage.

Zhiguo Du, Zhihui Wu, Bin Wen, Kehui Xiao · 5 authors

Block chain technology has the characteristics of decentralization, distributed storage, open and transparent, consensus mechanism, security, information encryption, anonymity and so on. It provides an important way to realize the value added of modern animal supply chain. This paper studies the blockchain related technology, an optimization scheme of sBFT consensus algorithm is proposed, and then the optimization scheme is applied to traceability of animal product quality and safety, which solves the problem of decentralization of traceability system and improves the efficiency of consensus in the case of large data input of traceability system. Then, based on Fabric framework, this paper proposes the design and implementation scheme of traceability system for aquaculture industry chain, which can ensure that the participants of traceability system can not tamper with and modify the aquaculture records, and realize the security, reliability and unforgeability of traceability information. Finally, this paper builds a 12-Node block-chain network test environment based on four cloud servers. Under the same test conditions, the sBFT algorithm, PBFT algorithm and dBFT algorithm are tested and compared, and the function and performance of the traceability platform are tested, which shows that the system is feasibility and efficiency of the schemes designed in this paper.

Yaşanur Kayıkçı, Nachiappan Subramanian, Manoj Dora, Manjot Singh Bhatia

The prevention of food loss throughout the supply chain, including manufacturers, has become a major challenge for a number of organisations. In addition, consumers are also increasingly interested in the authenticity of food and want to ensure that they receive the right quality of food. To address this issue, there is a need for reliable and robust tools to be available in the Industry 4.0 era that can trace the food throughout the supply chain from the farm through processing until it reaches the customer and, thus, ensure transparency. Using the people, process, and technology (PPT) model, this paper develops a blockchain-enabled food supply chain framework including the future opportunities and the present impediments based on the systematic literature review and semi-structured case interviews from the context of emerging economies. The study investigates the suitability of blockchain technology in resolving major challenges, such as traceability, trust, and accountability in the food industry. The study further paves the way for future researchers to address the technological and people-related challenges in the Industry 4.0 era to mitigate the emerging problems in the food sector. Interestingly, we did not find many issues in process- and performance-related aspects. The study offers empirical evidence of blockchain technology implementation in the Industry 4.0 era that opens up the discussion for future researchers and lists the potential threats.

Yajie Wang, Kai Chen, Hao Miao, Bing Yang

Abstract Food safety is a major issue related to the vital interests of the people. In recent years, food safety incidents have emerged in an endless stream in China. However, the existing food safety traceability methods lack of data sharing, which makes it difficult to conduct unified supervision on food safety. In view of the problems existing in the current food safety traceability method, this paper introduces blockchain technology in food safety traceability field, selects milk as the object of food safety traceability in this paper, analyzes the whole process of milk supply chain, designs the overall framework of milk traceability scheme according to the demand analysis and design principles of milk safety traceability scheme, and designs the scheme’s business function module, and chooses ECP-96 traceability coding scheme to ensure the uniqueness as well as security of milk traceability source. In view of the current application of blockchain technology, Hyperledger Fabric is creatively selected as the blockchain technology platform, and Go language is used to develop and implement the traceability method. Through the deployment of multiple nodes and functional testing, the expected food safety traceability goal is achieved.

Naoum Tsolakis, Denis Niedenzu, Melissa Simonetto, Manoj Dora · 5 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Joseph E. Kasten

The safety, availability, and cost of a nation’s food supply is of vital importance to its citizens and government. One type of technology with the potential to cause widespread change in the food production process is blockchain. This paper provides a systematic review of the academic literature surrounding the application of blockchain to the production, transport, and protection of food. This review also includes some recommendations for future research directions and provides a strong foundation for further research in the application of blockchain to the agriculture industry.

Stefanella Stranieri, Federica Riccardi, M.P.M. Meuwissen, Claudio Soregaroli

No abstract is available for this record.