Food supply chains are highly distributed, collaborative, heterogeneous, diverse, and varied by product, process, and destination. The global food supply chain (FSC) objective is to maintain a good balance between supply and demand and move products from producer to market. However, sustainability of the FSC has become a major concern as limited resources and increasing population pressure threaten its existence. Supply chain management is an important issue for FSC due to information flow throughout the supply chain. Industry-specific characteristics and extensive integration among multiple actors in an entire supply chain exacerbate this situation. The agri-food sector has one of the lowest rates of information technology penetration for innovation. Over the past thirty years, information and communication technology (ICT) has been introduced into the agricultural and food sectors, helping to improve food production and transportation. However, there are various challenges, such as transparency, accountability, food scandal, trust, and inefficient information flow, that the food supply chain is still facing in reaching sustainable goals. The complexity of food supply systems and the opportunities and challenges faced regarding desired sustainability performance need to be examined to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Blockchain is an emerging and disruptive digital technology that can transform governance and sustainability in integrated food supply chains. It provides a transparent, immutable, and traceable ledger that minimizes anomalies and information fraud, making it a potential solution for designing a transparent, traceable food system. Blockchain can potentially improve the sustainability of the food supply chain by providing a transparent traceability system. Food traceability is important for managing the food supply chain and protecting public health. It allows quick and accurate traceability of contaminated food that causes foodborne illness outbreaks, leading to the withdrawal of contaminated food from markets. Blockchain can achieve traceability, provenance tracking, transparency, and reduce environmental impact in the food supply chain. It also helps in achieving sustainable development goals set by the UN. However, there is no scientific research on blockchain’s contribution to achieving these goals in the food supply chain. Therefore, this article presents a systematic literature review and thematic analysis to study the relationship between FSC sustainability, blockchain, and sustainable development goals.
Geneci da Silva Ribeiro Rocha, Diego Durante Mühl, Hermenegildo Almeida Chingamba, LetÃÂcia de Oliveira · 5 authors
Information technologies such as blockchain are developing fast, overcoming bottlenecks, and quickly taking advantage of their application. The present study analyzes recent changes concerning the benefits, disadvantages, challenges, and opportunities of blockchain applications in agribusiness. Interviews were conducted with and a questionnaire was applied to professionals working in the development and application of blockchain technology in agribusiness, to compare their perception of the recent advances. The results showed that the importance of blockchain technology to improve governance and information flow along supply chains has increased, and this is the main perceived benefit. The main disadvantages were removing intermediaries and the high cost of implementing the technology. The absence of a widely accepted platform in blockchain operations is the leading and growing challenge, while patterns for blockchain technology seem to be being overcome. The integration of blockchain with new technologies, and the competitiveness provided by the technology, are seen as the main and growing opportunities. Despite the study limitations, we conclude that the benefits and opportunities associated with blockchain application in agribusiness outweigh the challenges and disadvantages in number and importance, and are becoming more relevant.
Blockchain technology has brought about profound revolutions in supply chain management. Notably, in the agricultural sector, blockchain-based traceability has become an essential tool to maintain the safety and quality of farm commodities. However, the implementation of blockchain technology in agricultural traceability is not prevalent. In this paper, mathematical modeling and simulation methods were used to investigate the decision making regarding the adoption of blockchain traceability in agriculture, which comprises producers, processors, and governments. This paper provides further analysis of the optimal blockchain-based traceability strategies of the members of the agricultural product supply chain in different scenarios. The results reveal the following: (1) Producers and processors should manage the traceability costs for adopting blockchains to improve their brand image and gain more benefits. (2) The government should encourage supply chain agents to participate in traceability by establishing an effective reward-and-punishment mechanism. In addition, the research will help agricultural supply chain agents to design strategies to implement traceability in agriculture and create a transparent and efficient data-driven agricultural products supply chain. Furthermore, these findings provide guidance to policymakers to develop policies to accelerate the implementation of blockchain-based traceability systems to guarantee fraud-free and sustainable agricultural supply chains.
This paper is about the simulation analysis of the dynamics of an agribusiness enterprise under the assessment and improvement of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). In recent years, the company has been under pressure from the industry to provide more data on the traceability of its entire supply chain system and raw materials. However, the existing food traceability system is often faced with many challenging problems and difficulties under technical limitations, such as different regulations and restrictive policies, lack of standardized data management system; and complicated product tracing is often accompanied by human error, classification difficulty, tracing speed, and low efficiency. By analyzing the successful application paths of DLT in two well-known agricultural enterprises, this paper qualitatively and quantitatively evaluates the utilization of DLT. Using the logistic regression equation, it is proposed that the company check the factor variables in the real environment through the hypothetical pilot project to popularize DLT application. The study verifies that DLT can help agribusiness improve the traceability performance of raw materials and the entire supply chain and provides empirical evidence for the transparency and traceability of supply chain information in the industry. At the end of the paper, to further explore the reverso context of cases on DLT.
Many blockchain initiatives significantly use the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) to store user data off-chain. The centralized administration, ambiguous data, unreliable data, and ease of creating information islands are all issues with traditional traceability systems. This study develops a monitoring system using blockchain technology to record and inquire about product information in the supply network of Non-Perishable (NP) agro goods to address the above issues. The transparency and trustworthiness of traceability data were considerably improved by employing blockchain technology's distributed, tamper-proof, and traceable properties. To alleviate the strain on the blockchain and enable efficient information inquiry, a storage structure is built in which both public and private data are stored in the blockchain and the Inter Planetary File System (IPFS) using cryptography. Because of its ability to trace the origin of food, blockchain technology contributes to the development of reliable food supply chains and the establishment of rapport between farmers and their customers. Since it provides a secure location for data to be kept, it can pave the way for implementing data-driven farming techniques. In addition to improving data security, recording farm data in IPFS and storing encrypted file IPFS hashes in smart contracts solves the issue of blockchain storage explosion. And when used in tandem with smart contracts, it enables instantaneous outflows between parties in response to changes in data stored in the blockchain. The paper also offers simulations of the implementation and analysis of the performance. The findings validate that our system improves security for sensitive information, safeguards supply chain data, and meets the needs of real-world applications. Furthermore, it boosts throughput efficiency while reducing latency.
Urbanization has led to increasing fish consumption, resulting in high demand for fish and fish products. Challenges in this sector, include fraudulent fish supply, overfishing, unscientific handling, quality concerns, etc. Blockchain-based systems in the seafood sector could provide traceability access to the seafood for the consumers and authorities to know if the seafood consumed/sold is legal, ethical, hygienic, economic, etc. Blockchain platforms like Ethereum promote secure digital collaboration of the actors across the supply chain eliminating the intermediaries. The literature documents a very limited number of blockchains that operate in the fisheries sector. Pacifical Atato is designed to promote and develop yellowfin tuna supply chains of Pacific island nations. Project Provenance Limited seeks to bring an end to the unsustainable fishing practices. Tuna distribution through transparent, novel chains is the goal of TraSeable solutions. Treum explored the investments to develop the supply chains of fisheries in the South Pacific. IBM’s Food Trust traces food supplies, including farmed shrimp from India, and is affiliated with retailers like Walmart, Nestle, etc. OpenSC is a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) project that ensures ethical product sourcing and uses QR (Quick Response) code scanning and RFID (Radio Frequency Technology) to track fish.
I Gusti Made Teddy Pradana, Taufik Djatna, Irman Hermadi, Indah Yuliasih
Coffee is a crucial agricultural commodity in developing nations like Indonesia; so it is important to implement a trustworthy traceability system for the product. However, there are no established guidelines for developing a blockchain-based traceability system that the coffee industry can adopt. Therefore, this study aims to present a Digital Business Ecosystem (DBE) framework and a blockchain-based traceability system prototype for Indonesian coffee. The study process involved a literature review, field observations, and the creation of the proposed frameworks and prototypes using an integrated rapid prototyping method. The proposed DBE framework has three layers: business, digital, and infrastructure, while the prototype has use case diagrams and a model of functional, technological, and transaction flows. The system was validated through deployment tests such as recording-tracking coffee data using Ethereum smart contracts and interplanetary file system. The interconnectivity was verified through a mobile-based user interface design that includes registration and login pages, a main page, a transaction confirmation page, and a traceability page. It was discovered that the proposed framework and prototype have a high potential for real-world implementation due to their ability to effectively address the challenges and promote a positive business community culture while being supported by the mapped DBE layers. Further study is recommended to test and enhance the proposed framework and prototypes and examine the relationship between system development and technology adoption. Moreover, managerial insights were provided to the coffee business community, policymakers, and developers for the successful development of Indonesian coffee DBE with the blockchain-based traceability system.
Blockchain, smart contracts, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are essential technologies for the business process re-engineering of supply chains in the era of Industry 4.0. The agricultural food supply chain is one of the research areas where these disruptive technologies can play a crucial role in automating business processes, providing real-time goods monitoring, and securing transactions. With the help of blockchain, smart contracts, and the IoT, a product’s health and environment can be monitored throughout the supply chain. In this study, we have critically examined the relevance of these technologies through various activities of the agriculture supply chain using the approach of Business Process Modeling (BPM). The blockchain and smart contracts-based findings of the BPM were then incorporated along various layers of the Reference Architecture for Modeling Industry 4.0 (RAMI 4.0). This enabled us to introduce the IoT, blockchain, and smart contract based smart agriculture framework, Agri-4-All. Agri-4-All can be used to automate the intra-organizational and inter-organizational processes of the agricultural supply chain. We developed, deployed, and tested the intra-organizational and inter-organizational smart contracts written in the Solidity language for a typical scenario related to the agriculture supply chain. Our hybrid smart algorithms implemented using Ganache and Truffle suite reduce the gas cost in our proposed intra-organizational smart contracts by 13.89 times as compared to the traditional smart contract-based model.
Kamal Addou, M. Y. El Ghoumari, S. Achkdir, Mohamed Azzouazi
Many food contamination incidents have occurred during the last decade which has proven the failure of the food supply chain management system to track the food, money, and information movement within the food supply chain. Many models have been established. This paper presents the design and implementation of the new model providing real-time data acquisition, monitoring, and storing on a tamper-proof blockchain of the main food supply movement. This system is using smart contracts that are deployed on the Ethereum blockchain to allow every participant to transact securely with other FSC players. IoT networks are implemented in different workplaces to gather multiple data about food status without human involvement to ensure transparency by different sensors. Machine learning models are established to ensure the correctness of the collected data and help drive decision making within the application or businesses.
Due to an increase in agricultural mislabeling and carelesshandling of non-perishable foods in recent years, consumers have been calling for the food sector to be more transparent. Due to information dispersion between divisions and the propensity to record inaccurate data, current traceability solutions typically fail to provide reliable farm-to-fork histories ofproducts. The three most enticing characteristics of blockchain technology areopenness, integrity, and traceability, which make it a potentially crucial tool for guaranteeing the integrity and correctness of data. In this paper, we suggest a permissioned blockchain system run by organizations, such as regulatory bodies, to promote the origin-tracking of shelf-stable agricultural products. We propose a four-tiered architecture, parallel side chains, Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs), and Interplanetary File Systems (IPFS). These ensure that information about where an item came from is shared, those commercial competitors cannot get to it, those big storage problems are handled, and the system can be scaled to handle many transactions at once. Thesolution maintains the confidentiality of all transaction flows whenprovenance data is queried utilizing smart contracts and a consumer-grade reliance rate. Extensive simulation testing using Ethereum Rinkeby and Polygon demonstrates reduced execution time, latency, and throughput overheads.
In agri-food supply chains (ASC), consumers purchase agri-food goods from farmers. During this process, customers emphasize the need for agri-food safety, while producers hope to enhance their revenues. Due to the dynamism and complexity of the Bangladesh ASC, the traceability and control of agri-food goods encounter formidable obstacles. Due to their reliance on intermediaries, legal financial hurdles, Ethereum-based financial solutions, etc., however, most existing solutions cannot adequately meet the traceability and management needs of Bangladesh ASC. To solve these issues, the authors proposed an integrated Agri-food supply chain (IASC) model. In this study, a systematic review of the literature was conducted using a thematic analysis method. In a portion of the model, the authors depicted a linear physical flow to illustrate the relationship and function of intermediaries and to explain Bangladesh ASC’s dependence on intermediaries. The approach incorporates Blockchain technology and IoT to promote transparency, minimize mistake, prevent product delays, remove unethical and illegal actions, improve supply chain (SC) management, track the whereabouts of the goods, and eventually increase consumer and supplier trust. The article also mentions that crypto currency-based financial transactions between stakeholders in the supply chain are now unlawful in Bangladesh. For blockchain API, a mobile banking and digital payment-based solution has been proposed. Finally, the blockchain-based Hyperledger Sawtooth API has been suggested so that clients can trace the entire history of a product by scanning the QR code on the packaging. Since Bangladesh’s economy is primarily based on agriculture, this research can assist in boosting Bangladesh’s economy. The paper would also contribute to the reduction of corruption and the improvement of firmer/grower and consumer satisfaction. The findings also pave the way for future studies to implement blockchain technology in ASC without relying on Ethereum-based financial flow solutions.
Blockchain technology is a distributed ledger that guarantees the immutability of data and asset tracking. Its characteristics can result in an improvement to traditional agri-food Supply Chains. Blockchain-based traceability systems let producers improve their visibility and consumers trust the products they buy and where they come from. Actual literature lacks an exhaustive analysis of the benefits and drawbacks of Blockchain applied to the agri-food domain. This paper aims to overcome this issue: to understand the state-of-the-art related to the application of Blockchain in the agri-food sector, we screened 183 papers and performed a literature review answering six Research Questions. The work takes into consideration the advantages and disadvantages of implementing such paradigm, with an analysis on the role of industries. The main findings are related to research directions: they regard the lack of training both for industries and stakeholders, the involvement of additional technologies (i.e., Big Data, Edge Computing), and the absence of supporting tools for developers.
Tracing the origin of the product in the agriculture supply chain offers food safety, identifying the root cause of the food hazard if any, information connectivity between the participating stakeholders and to achieve customer trust. Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology whose transactions can be recorded in a decentralised and immutable ledger. Several applications were developed in the last few years for blockchain based - traceability systems. Most of the work concentrated on information retrieval and system scalability. Still, promising research has not been seen for a blockchain traceability system with user identification methods. This work presents a blockchain system with user identification and access control mechanisms to fill the gap for each supply chain participant. In addition, the system also proposes a novel Proof of Transaction (PoTx) consensus algorithm designed to achieve scalability with reduced communication overhead and computation power. A novel PoTx algorithm is developed by choosing a random validator from a consensus group based on the transaction count to enforce the fault-tolerance of the system. The proposed system with user identification method allows to prevent and identify product adulteration while tracing the agriculture product.
Cristian Valencia-Payan, Jos�Fernando Grass-Ram韗ez, Gustavo RamÃrez-González, Juan Carlos Corrales
Traditionally, food sustainability has been considered solely in the stage of agricultural production. However, globalization, the expansion of the food production industry, and the emergence of supermarket chains that control the retail food market require specific significant changes in supply chains in the food sector and, therefore, we need to address the economic, social, and environmental impacts of these events. On the other hand, social selling has increased rapidly in recent years, with a further boom, following current events related to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). This explosion of social sales, where there are usually no control and regulation entities, can bring problems associated with mishandling items. In this paper, we expose how Blockchain technology supports the traceability of social sales by validating the data provided by the chain participants such as digital health passports, production and transport data in the sale process; the proposed solution generates recommendations on product management considering the agreements previously made by the network actors. To evaluate the proposed smart contracts, we use Hyperledger Caliper, obtaining an average throughput of 12.6 transactions per second and an average latency of 0.3 s for the asset update process. We also use a study case to evaluate the proposed project platform’s selling-transport stage using Internet of Things (IoT) sensors.
Aiming at the problems such as slow traceability efficiency, poor sharing, and the difficulty of matching the throughput of a blockchain single chain structure due to the complexity of the grain food supply chain links, the large number of participants, and the large amount of data information, this paper proposes a grain food blockchain traceability information management model based on the master-slave multichain structure by analyzing the processes and data characteristics of each link in the grain food supply chain; on this basis, the PLEW consensus algorithm based on Raft + improved PoW algorithm is designed for the master chain, and the CI-PBFT consensus algorithm based on trusted information degree is designed for the slave chain. The master chain and slave chain are anchored to each other through hash locking, and the data is uploaded and queried through smart contracts. In order to verify the effectiveness of the model, the blockchain traceability system is designed and implemented based on Hyperledger Fabric2.2. At the same time, it is compared with the transaction throughput and traceability efficiency of the blockchain single chain structure. Through the safety analysis of the data information of a company in Hubei, the results show that the grain traceability system designed and implemented in this study has certain advantages over the blockchain single chain structure in all aspects. It can also solve the grain food security problems that consumers worry about, and provide reference for the research of grain blockchain traceability information management.
Aditi Saha, Rakesh D. Raut, Vinay Surendra Yadav, Abhijit Majumdar
The food supply chain (FSC), being a complex network, faces major issues such as traceability, food security, safety and sustainability. Blockchain technology (BLCT) is regarded as an innovative technology that can transform FSC by means of its traceable, irrevocable, tamperproof network. BLCT being a new technology, little work has been carried out on the FSC domain. The purpose of the study is to examine the most recent trends, benefits, challenges, and application of BLCT in the FSC and explore the comprehensive adoption and application of BLCT, stating how it helps to achieve a triple bottom line (TBL) and net zero in the supply chain. The methodology used in this article is a systematic literature review (SLR) comprising 55 papers spanning the years 2018 to 2022. The findings of the study state that BLCT helps to achieve food safety, security, and traceability and increases the performance of the FSC. It also contributes to achieving the TBL of sustainability which can further help to achieve net zero. Based on this work’s insight and observations, practitioners and academics can better understand how companies can implement BLCT and achieve TBL benefits in the FSC, which could eventually provide a path to achieving net zero.
Ch G V N Prasad, A. Mallareddy, M. Pounambal, Vijayasherly Velayutham
The advancement of Internet-based technologies has made huge progress toward improving the accessibility of "smart agriculture." With the advent of unmanned and automatic management, smart agriculture is now able to accomplish monitoring, supervision, and real-time picture monitoring. It is not possible to know for sure that the data in a smart agriculture system is complete and secure from intrusion. This article investigates and assesses the potential of edge computing and blockchain for use in smart agriculture. We combine the advantages of blockchain technology and the edge computing framework to create a smart agriculture framework system that is based on a very straightforward analysis of the evolution of smart agriculture. The study proposes a thorough method for emphasizing the significance of agriculture and edge computing, as well as the advantages of incorporating blockchain technology in this context. This paper also proposes an intelligent agricultural product traceability system design: edge computing with blockchain for smart agriculture. The study concludes with a discussion of outstanding problems and difficulties that can arise during the creation of a blockchain-based edge computing system for smart agriculture systems.
Purpose This study explores the influence of the following factors on consumer adoption of blockchain food traceability (BFT): innovation-adoption characteristics, segmentation, expertise in food traceability, expertise in blockchain technology, food categorical preferences and perceived important features of BFT. Design/methodology/approach The data was collected via an online questionnaire with 1,401 participants in New Zealand. Exploratory factor analysis, structural equation modelling and segmentation analysis were undertaken. Findings Consumer adoption of blockchain food traceability was significantly influenced by two innovation-adoption characteristics – perceived incentives and perceived complexity, as well as their expertise in food traceability. Two consumer segments were identified: Conservatives (48%) and Pioneers (52%). Significant differences were found between these two segments in terms of gender, age, education, occupation, residential area and ethnicity. Consumers are more willing to use BFT for purchasing fresh, imported, staple and normal foods than for processed, domestic and upscale foods. Their perceived important specific features of BFT are product origin, food safety information, quality control, food safety information, hygienic condition and scarcity management. Originality/value This study contributes knowledge to address the current knowledge gap regarding consumer adoption of blockchain food traceability by using a large sample set. It is also the first study to recognise consumer segments for BFT; to provide information about consumers' important socio-demographic characteristics, food categorical preferences and perceived important features towards BFT; and to explore the influences of consumers' innovation-adoption characteristics, expertise in food traceability and expertise in blockchain technology on their adoption of blockchain food traceability.
The outbreak of the COVID-19 and the Russia Ukraine war has had a great impact on the rice supply chain. Compared with other grain supply chains, rice supply chain has more complex structure and data. Using digital means to realize the dynamic supervision of rice supply chain is helpful to ensure the quality and safety of rice. This study aimed to build a dynamic supervision model suited to the circulation characteristics of the rice supply chain and implement contractualization, analysis, and verification. First, based on an analysis of key information in the supervision of the rice supply chain, we built a dynamic supervision model framework based on blockchain and smart contracts. Second, under the logical framework of a regulatory model, we custom designed three types of smart contracts: initialization smart contract, model-verification smart contract, and credit-evaluation smart contract. To implement the model, we combined an asymmetric encryption algorithm, virtual regret minimization algorithm, and multisource heterogeneous fusion algorithm. We then analyzed the feasibility of the algorithm and the model operation process. Finally, based on the dynamic supervision model and smart contract, a prototype system is designed for example verification. The results showed that the dynamic supervision model and prototype system could achieve the real-time management of the rice supply chain in terms of business information, hazard information, and personnel information. It could also achieve dynamic and credible supervision of the rice supply chain's entire life cycle at the information level. This new research is to apply information technology to the digital management of grain supply chain. It can strengthen the digital supervision of the agricultural product industry.
In the past few decades, food fraud and safety issues have given rise to growing concerns from the society. With the purpose of efficiently detecting and preventing food safety problems and tracing the accountability, the establishment of a reliable traceability system is indispensable. For a traditional traceability system, the support of blockchain technology can effectively remove its defects in terms of data tampering and sensitive information disclosure. The paper looks into different respects such as facts identified as food fraud, factors suitable for detecting food fraud, deficiencies of blockchain application in solving food safety problems, etc., using research methods of questionnaire survey and semi-structured interview. The finding is that although blockchain is a promising technology for the food safety traceability system on account of its possession of features such as tamper-resistance and distributed ledger technology, the application of this technology in food safety protection at current stage is faced with many challenges on the way to universalization, which still needs the effort of the government and influential associations to set up laws and regulations and tackle issues concerning trust of the blockchain network and the authenticity of original data.