By Sharon Inone
Blockchain will be key to food security. As the demand for healthier, nutritious, and sustainable diets trend upwards, so does the attention to blockchain technology, though still in its infancy stage. All the issues and challenges within the global food systems has resulted in the UN food’s summit’s five action plans, purposely developed to counter them. These include (i) ensuring access to safe and nutritious food for all (ii) shifting to sustainable consumption patterns (iii) boosting nature-positive production (iv) advancing equitable livelihoods and (v) building resilience to vulnerabilities, shocks, and stress. Blockchain technology can revolutionize the food system by enhancing the implementation of the five action plans.
What is the blockchain technology?
Blockchain technology simply is a digitized decentralized platform that stores and verifies transactions between users of a system. Blockchain is a shared ledger in which one block make up one transaction. Blockchain is a decentralized system implying all members within the system can have access. All the blocks within the system are unique to specific transactions and cannot be changed or reversed. This reduces corruption as data is secure and cannot be manipulated. It also can track a product from its origin and process it through the entire supply chain. (Pilkington 2016)
Why blockchain technology in agricultural food chains?
Blockchain can contribute to smart cities, climate smart agriculture and sustainable livelihoods. From food provenance to commodity tracking and trading, the projected role of blockchain for agricultural supply chain is significant. Blockchain has numerous uses in agriculture including crop and food production, food supply chain, controlling weather crisis, managing agricultural finance etc.
Source: Disruptor daily, 2018
Let us take blockchain in food supply chain as an illustration. Tracking within the supply chain is vital as it ensures food safety and integrity. According to FAO, 600 million people globally fall ill and 420,000 die every year after eating contaminated food resulting in the loss of 33 million healthy life years. US$110 billion is lost annually in productivity and medical expenses arising from the consumption of unsafe food. Food safety, nutrition and food security are inextricably linked. (Eskola, Kos et al. 2020)
With the emergence of blockchain, trust and transparency within the food systems can be restored.
Blockchain food supply chain can reduce food frauds through the following steps:
- IoT sensors generating data or farmers storing data.
- Distribution of gown crops to food processing companies
- Supply of processed food to wholesalers and retailers
- Consumers can back trace the supply chain. (Kamble, Gunasekaran et al. 2020)
Take for instance: Using blockchain technology, customers can instantly track the source of the meat products from farm through all the supply chain channels. customers will have access to safer and nutritious food. Additionally, customers will know if those products are produced sustainably and when they will expire. These will force large companies to reduce their environmental footprints and produce quality food while increasing the quantity. Also, smallholder farmers will be compensated fairly.
Source: Sofocole Technologies, 2018
Hence, apart from the wealth of benefits blockchain can bring to agricultural systems, it can also make it attainable to figure out where in the supply chain ecosystem, when and how food has been contaminated ensuring healthy, nutritious, and safe food for all.
Blockchain is a looming innovative technology that can change the course of our agricultural food systems. It can pave the way for SDG2 on ending hunger and poverty and the UN food summit action plans. Though more research and information are needed, that should not stop us from seeing blockchain as a convenient platform to improve and better the planet’s food systems.
References
Eskola, M., et al. (2020). “Worldwide contamination of food-crops with mycotoxins: Validity of the widely cited ‘FAO estimate’of 25%.” Critical reviews in food science and nutrition 60(16): 2773-2789.
Kamble, S. S., et al. (2020). “Modeling the blockchain enabled traceability in agriculture supply chain.” International Journal of Information Management 52: 101967.
Pilkington, M. (2016). Blockchain technology: principles and applications. Research handbook on digital transformations, Edward Elgar Publishing.