Abstract The increasing population and income inequality in the last decades have made it necessary to focus on the concept of sustainability. In the changing world order, with economic crises, instabilities, pandemics, and social media, sustainability awareness differs significantly from past years. In addition, developing new technologies and concepts (big data, blockchain, IoT, robotic, etc.) plays a crucial role in meeting social awareness in terms of sustainability. Food sustainability is also one of the most important pillars in this concept. The integration of new technologies in agriculture and food chains will enable the current world population to use resources more efficiently and sustainably. Blockchain, one of the technologies that emerged with the arrival of Industry 4.0, is a technology that can be used effectively in many sectors. Particularly in supply chain networks, it is seen as a technology that supports the sustainability concept due to its features such as decentralization, reliability, transparency, consensus standards, and traceability. However, since blockchain is an immature and new technology, there are some challenges with integrating it into existing conventional systems. This study aims to present a conceptual framework for the integration of blockchain technology to establish a sustainable tea supply chain, define possible actions, and prioritize the possible risks that may arise in this integration process; this will be done through the Spherical Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (SFâAHP) approach. In this context, initially, the current tea supply chain will be considered and the activities carried out will be defined in terms of technological, environmental, and strategic sustainability. Then, the design that includes the integration of all activities with blockchain technology is presented. The proposed design covers the entire tea supply chain from end to end and is considered with regard to all sustainability dimensions. In the proposed framework, barriers that may be encountered and risks that may arise at each stage of the tea supply chain process are identified; managerial implications are then presented to eliminate these risks. To enhance the use of the recommendations made, risks and barriers are prioritized with SFâAHP management. Thus, the problems that need to be solved primarily in the technological transformation process can be evaluated more clearly. The proposed theoretical framework is expected to extend to all agricultural practices and support technological advances throughout the agricultural sector.
Gokul Kannan, Manjula Pattnaik, G. Karthikeyan, E. Balamurugan · 6 authors
Modern supply chain management relies heavily on crop processing technologies and blockchain technology. However, the majority of crop processing technology fails due to a lack of available supply chain management technologies. A supply chain management system based on crop processing is developed in this research. Digital ledger technology (blockchain) takes care of supply chains and deep learning image processing (crop processing). To process the harvested crops, the study makes use of machine learning techniques. Blockchain supply chain management technology is then used to deliver the processed crops to the shops. Consequently, the research permits the accurate and transparent distribution of crops to users in an optimal and secure manner. The full hybrid model is tested in a simulation to see if it can improve agricultural production and supply chain management. This new strategy improves agricultural processing rates, and when combined with the blockchain distributed ledger technology, this results in optimal crop management for the required users.
Ana Margarida Cachada, Hasmik Badikyan, Camilo Anzola-Rojas, Javier Parra-DomĂnguez · 6 authors
Agriculture traceability demands a large volume of data that needs to be collected across the supply chain. Very early tracking and traceability systems used workers to record the information manually which entails risks, such as faulty information recording as well as inefficient resource usage. The implementation of tamper proof semi-automated digital ledgers will have a great impact on issues such as compliance with regulations, food provenance, food fraud, and many others, and therefore will gradually increase the trust within the supply chain. This paper provides an overview on the different stages of the AgriFood supply chain and of the fundamentals of a Distributed Ledger Technology, namely Blockchain, which can be used to mitigate some of the issues related to transparency and traceability of this sector. It also presents some solutions that already implement this technology to enable the traceability in the AgriFood sector. The authors also present the most important challenges and opportunities identify regarding the application of Blockchain based traceability systems for the AgriFood supply chain.
Shobha Rathore, Nainsi Gupta, Ajaypal Singh Rathore, Gunjan Soni
Abstract Food supply chain transparency and traceability is very important to address the issue regarding quality and safety. In traditional tracing system, with increasing the complexity of supply chain making product recalls difficult to manage and putting human lives at risk. To eliminate such types of risks, blockchain technology gives more efficient and reliable system for food tracing. Recently, there is an exponential rise in adoption of blockchain technology and most disparate IOT (Internet of things) devices in agriculture and food supply chain. It is an evolving technology that comforts the food supply chains by providing transparent data records and manage the food movement in the chain using distributed (P2P) network. That is more secured and there's no need for third party verifications. Our focus in this research will be on the Indian wheat supply chain and issues related to food losses caused by a lack of transparency and traceability. In order to improve the transparency of the wheat supply chain, we created an end-to-end smart wheat supply chain solution that combines blockchain technology, NFC tags, IoTs, and smart contracts. The solution is supported by entity relationship diagrams, information and money flow sequence diagrams, and a blockchain network diagram. We also used a security algorithm and the âNFC-Tag writer by NXPâ program to validate and assess our system. This work could serve as a springboard for more in-depth research in this area. Depending on the existing situation in the industry, this research can also advise corporate procedures to deploy blockchain-based applications in the supply chain and logistics industry.
Giuseppe Varavallo, Giuseppe Caragnano, Fabrizio Bertone, Luca Vernetti-Prot · 5 authors
Recent progress in IoT and software development has simplified data acquisition and immutability of information in the agri-food supply chain. In the last few years, several frameworks and applications were proposed to ensure traceability in the agri-food-sector using distributed ledger technologies (DLT) such as Blockchain technologies. Still, no other study has presented a Blockchain-based traceability platform with a lower impact on the environment and lower cost for each transaction sent by the supply chain. This article presents a traceability platform based on Green Blockchain with low energy consumption and costs savings applied to the Fontina PDO cheese supply chain, part of the project âTypicalpâ, funded by the European Union (EU). The proposed traceability system is based on Algorand Blockchain, which uses the Pure Proof-of-Stake mechanism of consensus that requires minimal computational power, is highly scalable and environmentally sustainable. In addition to the environmental and financial benefits, the developed traceability platform has made it possible to digitize the entire production chain, making the data immutable and available in real-time for Fontina consortium operators and final consumers.
Purpose This study aims to formulate a conceptual sustainable framework for developing a trusted, reliable, scalable, transparent, traceable and sustainable agri-food supply chain in a developing country so that it minimizes wastage and increases the efficiency levels of agri-produce and its usage. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a rigorous review of extant literature, case studies and the interview method for theory building, using blockchain technology (BT) as a subject. Further, the study builds a framework to relate blockchain solutions to the challenges faced by the agri-supply chain. Notably, the use of BT in the agri-food supply chain is a relatively new area of study. Findings Limitations of using BT 3.0 in a diverse supply chain like the food sector, especially in a developing country such as India, may be overcome by adopting BT 4.0 and could change the countryâs face by controlling inefficiencies and ensuring transparency, helping in good governance, improving the humanitarian supply chain and integrating the bottom of the pyramid to the main economy. Based on the findings, this study proposes BT 4.0 for the agri-supply chain in India to deal with the current issues of demand-supply gap, wastages of agri-produce, unequal distribution of profit among agriproduct producers and logistics suppliers and ensuring sustainability. Research limitations/implications Results in this study have been derived from a specific demographic condition in India. Future research with other demographic conditions may be replicated. BT is a new technology product, and its effectiveness is yet to be established. Practical implications The outcome of this study provides the application of BT 4.0 in the area of the agri-food supply chain. The BT 4.0 framework has been developed on studying a few cases that either implemented BT or were in the testing phase. The benefits of the agri-food supply chain vis-Ă -vis its overall social well-being may be achieved on the successful implementation of the framework, despite existing complexities in the food supply chain. Further research on this subject may help the other dimensions of the complexity of adopting BT 4.0. Both practitioners and policymakers from developing countries can, therefore, use the findings of this study to analyze BT 4.0 and address the concerns of the agri-food supply chain. Originality/value This research paper has proposed a conceptual framework of BT 4.0, which is a completely new technology. It is fairly transparent, and therefore sustainable supply chain practices may be achieved easily.
Tracing food products along the entire supply chain is important for achieving better management of food products. Traditionally, centralized traceability systems have been developed for such purposes. One major drawback of this approach is that different users of the supply chain have their own systems with their own complexities and distinct features; thus, the interaction among them creates challenges when implementing a single centralized system. Therefore, a decentralized traceability system is favorable for tracing food products along the supply chain. In this study, we develop a supply chain traceability system framework based on blockchain and radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. The system consists of a decentralized blockchain-enabled data storage platform for data management and an RFID system at the packaging level for data collection and storage. We applied a consortium blockchain to the application. Fabric 2.0 in Hyperledger was chosen as the development platform. The proposed blockchain-enabled platform can provide decentralized data management and its underlying algorithm can guarantee data security. The system includes a creatively designed blockchain-enabled data structure in the RFID tag. When people scan the tag, the relevant information is written in the tag as a block linked to the previous blocks; simultaneously, the information is transmitted to the blockchain platform and recorded on the platform. No battery is required and the system works when there is an RFID reader nearby. The usage conditions included shipment, stocking, and storage. The RFID tag can be directly attached to paper packaging. This approach embeds the blockchain technique into the RFID tag and develops a corresponding system. The new traceability system has the potential to simplify the tracking of products and can be scaled for industrial use.
Malni Kumarathunga, Rodrigo N. Calheiros, Athula Ginige
Smallholder farmers produce over 70% of the worldâs food needs. Yet, the socioeconomic conditions of the smallholder farmers are substandard. One of the primary reasons for this unpropitious situation is that they generate modest income by selling their harvest due to the lack of trusted buyers and organized markets. This research explores how technology can enable the trust to reduce transaction-related risks, empowering unknown parties to transact. Blockchain technology has the potential of mitigating transaction-related risks and promoting trust with a tamper-proof history of transactions and automatic execution of smart contracts. Based on blockchain technology to promote trust, this research has discovered a novel approach for smallholder farmers to conduct exchanges by generating social capital as an individual and using that social capital as collateral for financial exchanges when establishing contracts. This approach empowers farmers to trade smart futures contracts on behalf of the expected harvest at a better rate to receive some cash in advance to be used in the cultivation process to produce a high-quality harvest that attracts better rates. It also enables them to perform aggregated marketing with enhanced market linkages that, in turn, assist in increasing margins made by the farmer.
Ibtisam Ehsan, Muhammad Irfan Khalid, Laura Ricci, Jawaid Iqbal · 7 authors
In agriculture supply chain management, traceability is a crucial aspect to ensure food safety for increasing customer loyalty and satisfaction. Lack of quality assurance in centralized data storage makes us move towards a new approach based on a decentralized system in which transparency and quality assurance is guaranteed throughout the supply chain from producer to consumer. The current supply chain model has some disadvantages like a communication gap between the entities of the supply chain and no information about the travel history and origin of the product. The use of technology improves the communication and relation between various farmers and stakeholders. Blockchain technology acquires transparency and traceability in the supply chain, provides transaction records traceability, and enhances security for the whole supply chain. In this paper, we present a blockchain-based, fully decentralized traceability model that ensures the integrity and transparency of the system. This new model eliminated most of the disadvantages of the traditional supply chain. For the coordination of all transactions in the supply chain, we proposed a decentralized supply chain model along with a smart contract.
Md. Akhtaruzzaman Khan, Md. Emran Hossain, Ali Shahaab, Imtiaz Khan
Despite substantial progress achieved with shrimp production during the last three and a half decades, growth of shrimp export remains minimal in Bangladesh. In the absence of effective traceability and transparency practices, a wide range of malpractice occurs both at the production and post-harvest stages. Traditional paper-based record-keeping methods for the shrimp supply chain are disparate and, therefore, cannot provide efficient traceability capacity and holistic view of the supply chain. These limit the identification of any issues in earlier juncture to proactively ensure food safety, best practice, and good governance. Addressing this multiplexed challenge, we present here ShrimpChain, a public-private hybrid blockchain-based conceptual framework. Focusing on the export market and utilizing existing technologies, the conceptual framework addresses the traceability, transparency, and certification challenges associated with shrimp export. In this framework, from the post-larva purchasing to the final packaging stage, relevant data for every stage will be entered by the associated actors via mobile/web app or Internet of Things devices to the blockchain network. Data authentication will be achieved by a novel approach of incorporating community consensus in conjunction with the machine-derived data entry timestamping method. Instead of the traditional central and endpoint certification approach, we propose a distributed and accumulative score-based certification approach that will grade packaged shrimps according to the completeness and accuracy of the authenticated data entered during different stages. Such distributed approach of certification will enhance not only food safety but also the quality and compliance to best practices. Most importantly, engaging shrimp farmers in the safety and quality assurance as well as to the certification process will empower them to have better control over the market and incentive to produce high-quality shrimp for high-value market.
Somdip Dey, Suman Saha, Amit Kumar Singh, Klaus D. McDonald-Maier
Food waste is an important social and environmental issue that the current society faces, where one third of the total food produced is wasted or lost every year while more than 820 million people around the world do not have access to adequate food. However, as we move towards a decentralized Web 3.0 enabled smart city, we can utilize cutting edge technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, cloud computing and many more to reduce food waste in different phases of the supply chain. In this paper, we propose SmartNoshWasteâa blockchain based multi-layered framework utilizing cloud computing, QR code and reinforcement learning to reduce food waste. We also evaluate SmartNoshWaste on real world food data collected from the nosh app to show the efficacy of the proposed framework and we are able to reduce food waste by 9.46% in comparison to the originally collected food data based on the experimental evaluation.
Christian Bux, Erica Varese, Vera Amicarelli, Mariarosaria Lombardi
Islam is the second-largest religion on a global scale. All around the world Muslims are estimated to comprise more than 1.9 billion people. Therefore, the demand for Halal commodities is expected to reach a high growth rate: thus, it is crucial to increase its global marketâs reliability and traceability. Based on these grounds, the scope of this paper is to assess Halal food sustainability, examining the barriers and opportunities offered by the certification and blockchain tools. To this purpose, the authors carried out an integrative literature review, selecting 54 contributions in the Web of Science platform. Despite several limitations, such as the lack of a standardized framework or universally accepted and reliable certifying authorities, the implementation of blockchain technology has emerged as an interesting instrument to increase the trustworthiness and traceability of Halal foods. This tool could also help the development of protocols and standard procedures, ensuring hygienic and permitted products that may boost food safety and security. Besides, the enhancement of the Halal certification and the blockchain tool, even if several efforts are required in terms of innovation and cooperation by local authorities, industrial associations and leading consumers, could enhance fair trade, ethical business, green animal breeding and environmental economics, and hence sustainable development.
Traditional cold chain logistics has problems such as centralized data storage, low data reliability, easy data tampering, and difficulty in locating responsible persons, which leads to the inability to guarantee consumer rights. To solve these problems, a cold chain logistics traceability system is proposed for fresh agricultural products based on blockchain. Both alliance chain and private chain are used in the paper in order to ensure that the product traceability system not only has certain openness but also must contain enough privacy and security. Alliance chain is mainly used to query and share product traceability information. The private chain will be used to collect and store the product traceability information of each enterprise and then connected to the alliance chain via hash pointers. The proposed system is beneficial for reducing the burden of network transmission of alliance chain and improving the efficiency of consumer product data query. At the same time, the private chain ensures the security and privacy of enterprise product data, which not only has high data storage efficiency but also can meet the requirements of all participants for the traceability system. In the experimental part, the feasibility of this system is verified through simulation experiments, which provides a reference for the combination of blockchain technology and cold chain logistics traceability system.
Bongisizwe Erasmus Buthelezi, Patrick Ndayizigamiye, Hossana Twinomurinzi, Shopee Dube
This paper systematically reviews the literature on the adoption of Blockchain technology in Supply Chain Management (SCM) processes. Using the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis) methodology, 53 peer-reviewed research publications from five different databases (IEEE Xplore, Science Direct, Scopus, Google Scholar, and EBSCOhost) were selected and analyzed using a classification coding framework. The findings reveal that Agri-food traceability, Blockchain security, smart contracts, and the Internet of Things (IoT) were the significant identified current trends in the use of Blockchain in SCM processes. The key identified challenges include high costs of transactions and a lack of trust between stakeholders. Identified solutions were Blockchain traceability systems and the use of smart contracts and IoTs. In addition, this paper identified gaps in the literature that need to be addressed in future studies.
Today, agriculture remains the most important economic activity in the world. Food care is a major concern for the whole society. For agriculture-based supply chain management, traceability is considered as the major requirement. Traceability helps in providing quality assurance and transparency to the end user. The antiquated traceability system has the complications of centralized systems, non-transparency of information, unpredictable data, and the very easy formation of false data. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that one out of ten people is affected by having tainted food. Globalization involving different food production processes and automation pushes the food supply chain into a complicated web. Numerous advancements have been investigated lately to determine food vulnerability and carry productivity to food related issues. One of the expected advances is block chain, which is as of now being effectively executed in monetary areas, for example, bit coin. Block chain can also be used in the food supply chain industries to improve traceability and help in the danger decrease of fakes and different types of unlawful occupation. This paper presents a systematic survey on agrifood supply chain traceability issues using various block chain platforms such as Ethereum and Hyperledger, as well as IOT techniques such as barcodes, RFID, NFC, and QR codes. The performance of several consensus algorithms is also investigated.
The Covid-19 pandemic poses great challenges to the resilience of global agriculture in response to disasters or crises. The pandemic mitigation measures prevent the spread of coronavirus but bring disruptions to the agriculture sector. Smallholder farmers and small agricultural producer particularly showed their vulnerability to these disruptions amid the pandemic. Technology innovations can be adopted to develop resilient, flexible and inclusive agriculture. Blockchain enables autonomous and decentralized coordination of trust in a distributed network without any trusted third-party intermediaries that can vastly reduce the transaction costs of exchange and trade. This paper examines the viable applications of blockchain technology in enhancing the resilience of agriculture and the food supply chain, facilitating trades and financing, and driving value allocation from a perspective of institutional economics.
Blockchain technology is a complete secure distributed database (we also refer to it as a distributed ledger) where data is stored in every node. All stakeholders are equally responsible for every transaction. It gives rise to high security in the digital transaction, so many large companies are already changing their infrastructure adopt BCT, to name a few companies like McLane Company, Nestle, Unilever, Tyson Foods IBM Food Trust consortium including Dole Food, Driscollâs, Golden State Foods, Kroger, McCormick, and Co., has also been examining blockchain technology for the food supply chain and secure traceability. Even China-based company Dianrng and FnConn have already launched successful chained finance to enable supply chain using BCT.
Bello Musa Yakubu, Rabia Latif, Aisha Yakubu, Majid Iqbal Khan · 5 authors
The increasing number of rice product safety issues and the potential for contamination have established an enormous need for an effective strategy for the traceability of the rice supply chain. Tracing the origins of a rice product from raw materials to end customers is very complex and costly. Existing food supply chain methods (for example, rice) do not provide a scalable and cost-effective means of agricultural food supply. Besides, consumers lack the capability and resources required to check or report on the quality of agricultural goods in terms of defects or contamination. Consequently, customers are forced to decide whether to utilize or discard the goods. However, blockchain is an innovative framework capable of offering a transformative solution for the traceability of agricultural products and food supply chains. The aim of this paper is to propose a framework capable of tracking and monitoring all interactions and transactions between all stakeholders in the rice chain ecosystem through smart contracts. The model incorporates a system for customer satisfaction feedback, which enables all stakeholders to get up-to-date information on product quality, enabling them to make more informed supply chain decisions. Each transaction is documented and stored in the public ledger of the blockchain. The proposed framework provides a safe, efficient, reliable, and effective way to monitor and track rice products safety and quality especially during product purchasing. The security and performance analysis results shows that the proposed framework outperform the benchmark techniques in terms of cost-effectiveness, security and scalability with low computational overhead.
Blockchain technology is increasingly being supported for different agricultural commodity applications, including agricultural commodity tracing and provenance establishment. But many critical issues need to be addressed before the use of blockchain technology for this purpose becomes widespread both technologically and ethically. For that, I carried out a comparison of the different blockchain frameworks -mainly permissioned Hyperledger blockchain technology and Ethereum smart in terms of their agricultural sustainability applications. I also examined the role of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in supporting blockchain-driven sustainability. I identified how a lack of earth observation (EO) data undermines commodity provenance (and related ecological sustainability) establishment. However, the biggest threats to widespread blockchain technology adoption, especially for meeting sustainability standards include scalability issues and the lack of standard data protocols and governance measures.
Purpose This study aims to explore and analyze the application of blockchain technology (BKCT) in agrifood supply chain management (AFSM). Design/methodology/approach A systematic literature review (SLR) using Scopus, Emerald and Web of Science covering publications from 2016 to 2021 (till June). Out of 429 papers, 89 papers were shortlisted from journals based on citation analysis. The citation analysis was followed by a content analysis was for an in-depth analysis. Findings Regarding the application of BKCT in the agrifood supply chain, the study highlights the issue of food safety, traceability, transparency, eliminating intermediaries and integrating Internet of things (IoT) with BKCT as prominent applications in the agrifood sector. The study also uses the case of honey supply chain to use the explored applications in the agrifood sector and provides a traceability solution based on blockchain integrated with IoT. The challenges of BKCT as identified in the study are scalability, privacy, security, lack of regulations and lack of skills and training. Research limitations/implications The review considers only academic papers obtained from specific databases with their relevance based on number of citations. Originality/value The study contributes to filling the existing research gap through this SLR on the application of BKCT in AFSCM. The content analysis further assists in exploring the benefits and challenges of BKCT in the agrifood sector. Thus, the academic articles selected aid in this process.