Blockchain Papers

Raouf Mehannaoui, Kinza Nadia Mouss, Karima Aksa

No abstract is available for this record.

Jonas Lopes de Vilas Boas, Joel J. P. C. Rodrigues, Antônio Marcos Alberti

No abstract is available for this record.

Fei Ye, Siyu Liu, Yina Li, Yuanzhu Zhan · 6 authors

Despite the touting value of blockchain technology (BT), many agri-food supply chains are still struggling to the adoption of it. In this article, incorporating the benefit and cost associated with BT, we seek to answer whether and under what conditions can two competing agri-food supply chains benefit from the adoption of BT, and how government choose optimal subsidy scheme to promote the adoption of BT. The findings suggest that the Nash equilibrium outcome toward BT adoption strategy will be greatly affected by key parameters, such as competitive intensity, the growth rate of the market size and the investment cost with the adoption of BT, and the planting cost of the agri-food. Specifically, early adopter can always snatch more benefit from the adoption of the BT than the follower, and the gap between them will be increased in the competition intensity. In addition, the decisions selected by agri-food supply chains does not always benefit the consumer surplus and the social welfare, which call for further government subsidy scheme to promote the adoption of BT. The findings provide important implications for both the industrial managers and policy makers on how to benefit from BT in the digital transformation era.

Srdjan Tegeltija, Stefan Dejanović, Huanhuan Feng, Stevan Stankovski · 7 authors

Organic production, as a sustainable food production system, is designed to implement all agroecological principles that enable the preservation of human and animal health, environmental protection, and positive impact on society and the ecosystem while achieving significant economic benefits. Demand for organic food products is constantly growing, and the land area under organic production is continuously increasing. The problem in this sector is that producers of organic products face many administrative and systemic obstacles that prevent the faster development of this sector. On the other hand, consumers do not have complete confidence in the current mechanisms of control of organic production, so in the sale on the food markets and in the rest of the market, fake and unverified organic products can be found. Based on sensor data from the production field, this paper presents the SAFE platform as a solution for the described problem. The data necessary for producers to carry out the certification process are harmonized with the current legislation for organic food production. The SAFE platform uses blockchain technology to secure data consistency and history since it makes it impossible to change data history. The results of a survey about the SAFE platform are presented. The proposed solution stimulates the development and improvement of agricultural production by organic production methods, accompanied by increasing capacity in organic production.

Abdul Ghafoor Abbasi, Anna Rydberg, Peter Altmann

The digitization of a supply chain involves satisfying several functional and non-functional context specific requirements. The work presented herein builds on efforts to elicit trust and profit requirements from actors in the Swedish livestock supply chain, specifically the beef supply chain. Interviewees identified several benefits related to data sharing and traceability but also emphasized that these benefits could only be realized if concerns around data security and data privacy were adequately addressed. We developed a data sharing platform as a response to these requirements. Requirements around verifiability, traceability, secure data sharing of potentially large data objects, fine grained access control, and the ability to link together data objects was realized using distributed ledger technology and a distributed file system. This paper presents this data sharing platform together with an evaluation of its usefulness in the context of beef supply chain traceability.

Abhirup Khanna, Sapna Jain, Alessandro Burgio, Vadim Bolshev · 5 authors

Conventional food supply chains are centralized in nature and possess challenges pertaining to a single point of failure, product irregularities, quality compromises, and loss of data. Numerous cases of food fraud, contamination, and adulteration are daily reported from multiple parts of India, suggesting the absolute need for an upgraded decentralized supply chain model. A country such as India, where its biggest strength is its demographic dividend, cannot afford to malnutrition a large population of its children by allowing them to consume contaminated and adulterated dairy products. In view of the gravity of the situation, we propose a blockchain-enabled supply chain platform for the dairy industry. With respect to the supply chain platform, the dairy products of choice include milk, cheese, and butter. Blockchain is one of the fastest growing technologies having widespread acceptance across multiple industry verticals. Blockchain possesses the power to transform traditional supply chains into decentralized, robust, transparent, tamper proof, and sustainable supply chains. The proposed supply chain platform goes beyond the aspect of food traceability and focuses on maintaining the nutritional values of dairy products, identification of adulteration and contamination in dairy products, the increasing economic viability of running a dairy farm, preventing counterfeit dairy products, and enhancing the revenue of the dairy company. The paper collates the mentioned functionalities into four distinct impact dimensions: social, economic, operations, and sustainability. The proposed blockchain-enabled dairy supply chain platform combines the use of smart contracts, quick response code (QR code) technology, and IoT and has the potential to redefine the dairy supply chains on socio-economic, operational, and sustainability parameters.

Rania A. Ahmed, Ezz El‐Din Hemdan, Walid El‐Shafai, Zeinab A. Ahmed · 6 authors

Abstract The Internet of Things (IoT) is an important technology that provides efficient and dependable solutions in a variety of domains, such as smart agriculture and climatic change. It integrates billions of smart devices that can communicate with one another and gives solutions to automatically maintain and monitor smart agricultural and environmental fields. The combination of IoT, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and blockchain technology will allow us to transform smart agriculture into the Internet of smart agriculture, providing greater control, management, and security in supply‐chain networks. This paper presents an overview of the technologies in the domains of IoT, Climate‐Smart Agriculture (CSA), AI, Machine Learning (ML), and blockchain. In addition, the paper presents several approaches for integrating IoT with CSA data analysis. Both AI and blockchain are adopted for efficient CSA systems. The paper is concerned with the combination of three recent technologies: IoT, ML, and blockchain to serve the CSA applications. The challenges and opportunities of combining these technologies to serve CSA are also discussed in the paper.

Xiao Hu

This paper uses the Internet of Things and blockchain-related technologies to combine computer technology to develop a real-time monitoring system for cold chain logistics. The system can grasp the real-time dynamics of the cold chain environment of agricultural products and control them according to the dynamic conditions, which eliminates the blind spots in the cold chain logistics process and also guarantees the quality and safety of fresh agricultural products. This paper optimizes the internal resources of the blockchain system model, proposes an optimization algorithm, and combines the blockchain technology to construct a cold chain logistics model for agricultural products to obtain an embedded cold chain system. Finally, this paper designs an experiment to verify the performance of the system. According to the results of experimental research, the cold chain logistics system of agricultural products based on embedded system and blockchain constructed in this paper can effectively improve the transportation efficiency of agricultural products, and it also has a certain auxiliary effect on the monitoring of agricultural logistics transportation.

Moyixi Lei, Longqin Xu, Tonglai Liu, Shuangyin Liu · 5 authors

Concern about food safety has become a hot topic, and numerous researchers have come up with various effective solutions. To ensure the safety of food and avoid financial loss, it is important to improve the safety of food information in addition to the quality of food. Additionally, protecting the privacy and security of food can increase food harvests from a technological perspective, reduce industrial pollution, mitigate environmental impacts, and obtain healthier and safer food. Therefore, food traceability is one of the most effective methods available. Collecting and analyzing key information on food traceability, as well as related technology needs, can improve the efficiency of the traceability chain and provide important insights for managers. Technology solutions, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Privacy Preservation (PP), and Blockchain (BC), are proposed for food monitoring, traceability, and analysis of collected data, as well as intelligent decision-making, to support the selection of the best solution. However, research on the integration of these technologies is still lacking, especially in the integration of PP with food traceability. To this end, the study provides a systematic review of the use of PP technology in food traceability and identifies the security needs at each stage of food traceability in terms of data flow and technology. Then, the work related to food safety traceability is fully discussed, particularly with regard to the benefits of PP integration. Finally, current developments in the limitations of food traceability are discussed, and some possible suggestions for the adoption of integrated technologies are made.

Anita Gehlot, Praveen Kumar Malik, Rajesh Singh, Shaik Vaseem Akram · 5 authors

An intelligent ecosystem with real-time wireless technology is now playing a key role in meeting the sustainability requirements set by the United Nations. Dairy cattle are a major source of milk production all over the world. To meet the food demand of the growing population with maximum productivity, it is necessary for dairy farmers to adopt real-time monitoring technologies. In this study, we will be exploring and assimilating the limitless possibilities for technological interventions in dairy cattle to drastically improve their ecosystem. Intelligent systems for sensing, monitoring, and methods for analysis to be used in applications such as animal health monitoring, animal location tracking, milk quality, and supply chain, feed monitoring and safety, etc., have been discussed briefly. Furthermore, generalized architecture has been proposed that can be directly applied in the future for breakthroughs in research and development linked to data gathering and the processing of applications through edge devices, robots, drones, and blockchain for building intelligent ecosystems. In addition, the article discusses the possibilities and challenges of implementing previous techniques for different activities in dairy cattle. High computing power-based wearable devices, renewable energy harvesting, drone-based furious animal attack detection, and blockchain with IoT assisted systems for the milk supply chain are the vital recommendations addressed in this study for the effective implementation of the intelligent ecosystem in dairy cattle.

Duc-Hiep Nguyen, Nguyen Huynh Tuong, Hoang-Anh Pham

Recently, many governments in the world have been focusing on building sustainable agriculture to improve the life quality of farmers and significantly increase their income. In Vietnam, however, the farmers still face the problems of “good harvest–low prices, and vice versa” and lack capital for scaling or transforming the production model. One of the main reasons for this phenomenon is that the price of agricultural products does not depend on farmers’ efforts but is based on the purchase price of the trader or the market price. Besides, the farmers also maintain farming habits based on regional culture or follow trendy and profitable agricultural products. Those production strategies make this type of product oversupplied, leading to a down in price shortly, so the farmers’ income will decrease. The above problems stem from the lack of information and communication tools between actors in the agricultural value chain, especially between cooperatives, farmers, and consumers. This paper presents a Blockchain-based framework for developing a traceability solution as an effective method of communication between actors in the agricultural value chain toward a sustainable agricultural model. The proposed approach helps to fully convey the production and distribution of agricultural products and the ability to verify traceability information, thereby helping to increase prices and protect the brand of agricultural products.

Lorenzo Compagnucci, Dominique Lepore, Francesca Spigarelli, Emanuele Frontoni · 6 authors

This paper explores how Blockchain technology (BCT) can be integrated in the agri-food supply chain (ASC) and how BCT-based networks are formed. To do this, the paper describes a BCT solution, designed to enhance traceability, and analyses its adoption in two small firms. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach and the Actor-Network Theory (ANT), the findings have revealed that BCT improves how data is collected and has changed how firms interact with stakeholders and customers. Firms have enhanced their reputations and started targeting new domestic and international markets. Technical and economic challenges were found when persuading actors to participate in the BCT-based network.

Liukun Wang, Chunjie Qi, Peng Jiang, Xiang Si

In the context of COVID-19, the circulation of agricultural products is increasingly important for the nutrition and health of people. With the changing needs of society and the advancement of technology, the agricultural product circulation system needs to undergo corresponding changes to adapt to the modern fast-paced social system. Blockchain technology couples with the circulation of agricultural products, as its technical features, such as immutability and a distributed ledger database, ensures the speed and stability of the key information circulation process of agricultural products. The research goal of this paper was to clarify the influence of blockchain technology on the qualification rate and circulation efficiency for agricultural products. Based on the main characteristics of blockchain technology and a summary of domestic and foreign theoretical research, this paper simulated the impacts of blockchain technology on the agricultural product circulation system. The results revealed that blockchain technology can improve the qualification rate of agricultural products and thereby ensure their quality and safety. The introduction of blockchain increased the qualification rate by nearly 30%. Moreover, blockchain technology significantly enhanced the efficiency of the agricultural product circulation system, thereby greatly promoting economic benefits. The introduction of blockchain increased circulation efficiency by nearly 15%. Finally, the introduction of blockchain technology can effectively promote the governance level and reduce the supervision costs of the agricultural product circulation system. Through simulation analysis, we found that blockchain technology has a positive impact on both the qualification rate and circulation efficiency for agricultural products. These findings enrich research into the application of blockchain technology in the management and circulation of modern agricultural products.

Marcelo Antunes Fernandes, Estrela Ferreira Cruz, António Miguel Rosado da Cruz

Nowadays, people are increasingly adopting a healthier way of life. A healthy and balanced diet is essential for a better quality of life. A good diet helps to prevent and fight diseases. Thus, people are giving more importance to the food they consume. Consumers no longer seek foods based on their brand, but rather based on features such as nutritional value or sustainability. These features are directly related to all stages of a product’s value chain, from its creation (cultivation) until it reaches the final consumer. In order for the final consumer to have access to this information, it is necessary to create ways to ensure that this information is available and reliable, thus consolidating consumer confidence. This article focuses on traceability in Olive Oil production chain and its quality indicators as well as social and environmental sustainability indicators. It is therefore intended to create a solution by using Blockchain technology and Smart Contracts.

Jovanka Damoska Sekuloska, Aleksandar Erceg

The primary purpose of the supply chains is to ensure and secure the availability and smooth flow of the necessary resources for efficient production processes and consumption. Supply chain activities have been experiencing significant changes due to the importance and creation of the integrated process. Blockchain is viewed as an innovative tool for transforming supply chain management’s (SCM’s) actual business model; on the other hand, the SCM provides an applicative value of blockchain technology. The research is focused on examining the influence of blockchain technology on the increasing efficiency, transparency, auditability, traceability, and security issues of the food supply chain (FSC), with particular attention to the local food supply chain (LFSC). The main objective of the research is to suggest the implementation of blockchain technology in the local food supply chain as a niche of the food industry. The result of the research is the identification of a three-layers model of a smart local food supply chain. The model provides efficient and more transparent tracking across the local food supply chain, improving food accessibility, traceability, and safety.

Jisung Jo, Sanghyuk Yi, Eon-kyung Lee

No abstract is available for this record.

Andry Alamsyah, Naufal Hakim, Ratih Hendayani

The halal industry is constantly developing into a broader concept of the Islamic economy, an economic activity that follows the Islamic-based principle. As a populous Muslim country, Indonesia follows the growth trend by aiming to dominate the global halal market. The strategy is to improve the current halal assurance process. Presently, the technology and procedure do not provide enough process transparency, traceability, and granularity of information. To achieve the strategic goal, a technological change is needed. A new emerging technology, blockchain, may potentially answer the challenge. This study’s first objective is to discuss improving the current assurance practice in the Indonesian halal supply chain ecosystem, particularly in the meat industry. The second objective is to construct a traceability system model for the supply chain. Our goal is to propose a blockchain-based halal traceability system model. The model can be enhanced to be a national standard tool to develop the economy towards a sustainable supply chain.

Suganya Balasubramanian, I.S. Akila

Agricultural Food Supply chain management has arisen as an area of day-to-day importance for the agricultural food sector, since stakeholders involved in the execution of decision-making processes. Quality less agricultural products are added to the market in day-to-day life which leads to usage of chemicals in the production process. These leads to the major issues that gives the impact on agricultural product’s quality as well as overall well-being of the consumers. Devices are needed to identify the quality of the food products which are highly demanded due to the lack of transparency in the recent processes. Henceforth Blockchain technology is evolving as a decentralized and secure infrastructure which could replace involvement of a third party to verify the transactions inside the system. The purpose of the proposed work is to implement a Blockchain based solution i.e. constructing a Decentralized Application (DApp) using Hyperledger Fabric framework to verify the food quality and the cause of the agricultural supply chain. A private permissioned Blockchain concept is chosen instead of a public Blockchain in the proposed work to ensure transparency and secure transaction by consenting any person to access the network. Smart contract chain code was instantiated for the deployment of Blockchain network. All the performers who are involved in the supply chain must be able to interact with the system to achieve the transparency. Transaction and queries related to a food product are validated by peers of the Blockchain network. A Barcode & QR code-based scanning mechanism is used to indicate the customer’s satisfaction with their products. Transactions without third party gives Farmer’s reputation for their products. A unique DApp mechanism is used to identify each product within the food supply chain. Thus, the proposed system has been implemented as a prototype and validated using smart contracts.

Xin Zhang, Yue Li, Xiangzhen Peng, Zhiyao Zhao · 6 authors

The grain and oil food supply chain has a complex structure, long turnover cycles, and many stakeholders, so it is challenging to maintain the security of this supply chain. A reliable traceability system for the whole grain and oil food supply chain will help to improve the quality and safety of these products, thus enhancing people's living standards. Driven by the trusted blockchain and trusted identity concepts, this paper constructs an information traceability model for the whole grain and oil food supply chain, and it describes how contract implementation and example verification are performed. First, an information traceability model framework of the whole grain and oil food supply chain is established based on the survey and analysis of the grain and oil food supply chain. Second, trusted identification, blockchain master-slave multi-chain storage, and trusted traceability mechanisms are designed. The trusted identification mechanism is used to track the data information of the whole grain and oil food supply chain. The blockchain master-slave multi-chain storage solves the problem of miscellaneous information caused by many links in the whole grain and oil supply chain, while the credible traceability mechanism ensures the credibility of information collection, storage, and transmission. Finally, based on the data flow, the model operation process is analyzed. Using the information traceability model, the grain and oil food trusted traceability system is designed and developed with the Hyperledger Fabric open-source framework, and a case study is conducted to verify the system. The results show that the model and system constructed in this study solve the problems of low data security and poor sharing, which exist widely in the traditional traceability mechanism, and enable the trusted uplink, storage, processing, and traceability of multi-source heterogeneous information in the lifecycle of the whole grain and oil food supply chain. The proposed system improves the granularity and accuracy of grain and oil food traceability, and provides support for the strategic security of grain stock.

Shoufeng Cao, Marcus Foth, Warwick Powell, Thomas Miller · 5 authors

This paper designed and implemented a blockchain-based multisignature approach to digitally transform supply chain governance in multi-tier food supply chains, particularly in a geographically dispersed beef supply chain. An exploratory case study was utilised to demonstrate the design, implementation, and evaluation of a blockchain-based multisignature approach that was deployed on the Smart Trade Networks (STN) Proof of Authority (PoA) blockchain system for data collection and validation in a beef supply chain context. The multisignature approach was implemented with a use case to track a shipment of 92 cattle and meat products through key events from farm to food service. The use-case deployment records approximately 6000 data points registered on the STN PoA blockchain system. The real-case deployment illustrates the capability of the blockchain-based multisignature approach to digitally improve beef supply chain governance by enabling whole-of-chain transparency and trustworthy information sharing and supports supply chain professionals to have a better understanding of how to unlock blockchain potential for supply chain transformation.

Yu Cao, Chaoqun Yi, Guangyu Wan, Hanli Hu · 6 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Angelo Marchese, Orazio Tomarchio

Abstract Ensuring high quality and safety of food products has become a key factor on one hand to protect and improve consumers health and, on the other one, to gain market share. For this reason, much effort in the last year has been devoted to the development of integrated and innovative Agriculture and Food (Agri-Food) supply chains management systems, which should be responsible, in addition to track and store orders and deliveries, to guarantee transparency and traceability of the food production and transformation process. In this paper, differently from traditional supply chains which are based on centralized systems, we propose a fully distributed approach, based on blockchain technology, to define a supply chain management system able to provide quality, integrity and traceability of the entire supply chain process. The proposed framework is based on the Hyperledger Fabric technology, which is a permissioned blockchain system: a prototype has been developed and, by using some use cases, we show the effectiveness of the approach.

Pan Liu, Ziran Zhang, Fen-Yi Dong

Based on the advantages of Big Data and blockchain in food traceability area and information sharing area, it has attracted widespread attentions. However, it is not so popular in agricultural field, a vital reason is the scarcity of effective incentives. Government incentive as an important incentive measure is thought to be useful. To study the subsidy rules in the new background, we chose an agri-food supply chain with one producer and one retailer as research object and divided government incentive into direct incentive and indirect incentive. Then, considering the changes of consumer perceived safety on agri-food in the new environment, the demand function was revised. Furthermore, we proposed and analyzed three subsidy models and their benefit functions considering the information service inputs based on Big Data and blockchain (BBIS). Findings: (1) The subsidy models will not change the variation tendency of prices and benefits with the BBIS optimization coefficient, the BBIS investment costs from the producer and the retailer, the ascension of the unreliability coefficient of quality safety and the agri-food quality level. (2) When the subsidy coefficients about direct and indirect subsidies can meet a relationship, benefits of chain members in the indirect subsidy model are higher than them in the direct subsidy model. Findings offer a theoretical guidance for government departments to make and implement the subsidy strategies. In addition, for company, it can provide a theoretical guidance on setting pricing strategies in the new technology background.

Bogdan Georgescu, Cristian Bogdan Onete, Doru Pleșea, Sandra Diana Chița · 5 authors

The European Union aims for Member States to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. To this end, the European Commission has launched a set of policy initiatives in The European Green Deal. One of the components is the Farm to Fork strategy, through which the European Union aims to increase, among other things, to 25% of the agricultural areas with organic production, as well as new labeling rules to promote the sustainable consumption of food and organic food. A modern technology that can be used for food traceability is Blockchain technology. The main objective of this paper is to study consumers' perceptions of the possibility of using blockchain technology in the distribution of "organic" food products. The research was quantitative and followed the specific aspects of the blockchain concept and its use in the distribution and tracking of food and ecological goods, "organic". The aim of the research was to develop a predictive model, using the basic regression equation, to obtain a positive perception of the use of blockchain technology for food and environmental goods.