Blockchain in Agriculture Supply Chain- Redefining the Status Quo

According to reports, the worldwide population has grown to approximately 8.0 billion today and the figures are constantly increasing per diem. Add to this, the world bank has also forecasted that the number of people will expand between 11-12 billion by 2100.     

With such a massive rise in population, it’s apparent that the food requirements will increase substantially. As a result, to fulfill the dire food needs of the world population, the agriculture industry ought to integrate with next-generation technologies.

However, the Agriculture sector is enormous, which is why it has been confronted with countless challenges that affect the sustainability and traceability factors of the industry. 

So, to streamline the agriculture supply chain, initiating from an orthodox system to an unkempt marketplace, each and every factor needs to be addressed or revamped otherwise the system might face failures repeatedly.  

Forbes cited, that 95% of agricultural research in the last 30 years has concentrated on increasing productivity, and only 5% has contributed to receding losses. 

Therefore, implementing blockchain in supply chain would become your door to alleviate the failures in the conventional agriculture supply chain.  

On top of everything, blockchain technology can assist in mitigating dangers like- 1.6 billion tons of food wasted every year, which is a $750 billion loss in revenue. 

So, to redefine the standards of the agriculture sector, blockchain technology has come as a way to disrupt it and bring a diverse pool of solutions to solve critical challenges. Let’s dig a little deeper into this and learn more about the uses and applications of the blockchain in the agriculture sector. 

What is Blockchain in Agriculture?

Blockchain has pushed the agriculture supply chain sector to a whole new level and amended the existing old-school agriculture supply chain operations. All the more so, the blockchain has huge potential to alter the agriculture marketplace with a fair market value and give a closer look at efficient production through technological advancements. 

In light of this, blockchain technology offers boundless data management capabilities and companies with blockchain-directed operations are better off deploying a comprehensive range of data than using an older system causing plenty of problems. 

Besides, the most hyped term – blockchain – has surfaced in the agriculture industry, named Smart Agriculture. It’s geared towards meeting the needs of lessening environmental impact and utilization of natural resources with the execution of information and communication technologies (ICTs), and other modern technologies for analyzing and collecting data. 

The below-mentioned factors give a realistic view of implementing blockchain in agriculture businesses. Here, we’ll help you with how a blockchain-based agri-business system can be helpful in an organizational setup, the reality is that its uses are a lot more valuable.

Key Uses of Blockchain in Agriculture 

1. Receding waste

As per reports, 52% of fruits and vegetables are wasted annually in the USA before reaching customers. 

A follow-up to this, Forbes cited, 95% of agricultural research in the last 30 years has concentrated on increasing productivity, and only 5% has contributed to receding losses. 

Thus, incorporating blockchain concedes users to access a decentralized ledger across the farming operations, and offers a simplified approach to completing all the tasks, be it refining storage, ordering supplies, harvesting crops at the right time, and more.  

Without a doubt, using blockchain technology as a tool for post-harvest processes can considerably enhance operational efficacy and reduce food wastage. 

Additionally, farmers can make finer use of supply-demand algorithms to avoid the snags of overproduction.  

2. Improving supply chain administration

Currently, farmers are working on an orthodox and complicated supply-chain model. 

Millions of agriculture-based enterprises are fraught with management and communication roadblocks to procure accurate data for their food from farm to plate. 

With blockchain orientation, every data and link within the supply chain can be addressed, be it dates, locations, prices, certificates, QC, and other critical information. 

In an article, Deloitte depicts how the integration of blockchain into the agriculture supply chain lowers losses from the counterfeit market, improving the traceability of the supply chain and potentially giving a firm grip to position as a disruptive leader in the market. 

3. Giving fair pricing

Many farming entities don’t get the fair prices they deserve for their produce. 

In this event, blockchain technology has the potential to disrupt the supply chain marketplace, allowing farmers to get fair prices for their crops and reach more consumers than they could earlier. 

This would assist them in setting the pricing and negotiating the value more fairly and reasonably. 

4. Enhancing sustainability and Traceability 

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) has evaluated losses of $27 billion every year, which happened by soil destruction. 

However, that’s not all. 85% of rivers, coastal bodies, and lakes are contaminated with pollutants. The pesticide issue is too bad affecting the agriculture industry. 

This is why customers are now demanding farm-to-fork visibility of where the food comes from and how it was grown. 

As a result, using a blockchain-driven agricultural platform allows producers to provide provenance of their operational methods, suppliers, and supply chain. 

The new wave of blockchain-driven systems helps farmers to increase their sales by 25%, compared with the orthodox agriculture system they follow. 

Where traceability is the most considerable factor, using a blockchain-enabled ledger to record the complete status of crops- from farm to table, offers a real-time view of every factor to the blockchain in the agriculture supply chain.

5. Streamlined payment methods 

Agriculture businesses are running on vulnerable margins with mountainous and ubiquitous risks to make money. Following this, the legal proceeding for getting payments in the agriculture sector is too far from a straightforward approach. 

Every stack of crops has to be rated based on size, quality, and other factors. The process oftentimes takes days and weeks, or sometimes, payments are not processed until the stack has been monitored. 

Due to this, the financial logistics of institutions and trade can’t keep up with the updates and wouldn’t get traceability and trackability for their produce. 

Embracing blockchain brings “a distributed ledger technology” for keeping transactions, authorizing and validating payment processing on an immutable ledger. 

In a follow-up to this, it allows better trust and provides risk abatement that conventional banking can’t. Thus, it can also facilitate payments via cryptos and tokenization, making it faster, more economical, and more secure than standard transaction systems. 

Now, while you are familiar with the uses of blockchain in the agriculture supply chain business, let’s talk about the application and benefits that you must obtain after implementation. After all, boons are what help you take your business to unprecedented new heights.

Applications of Blockchain in the Agriculture Industry 

1. Inventory management 

Initiating from the dismay of crop growers, a lot of the produce needs to be supervised after reaching the store shelf. 

Concerning this, farmers have utilized innumerable strategies to ensure their crops do not spoil during storage. Implementing anything from technologies to deployed storage facilities or installations to avert the occurrence of mold and keep crops in advantageous conditions before they spoil out. 

Current technologies can’t fulfill the expectations in the agriculture supply chain, they are substandard in the way of giving the exact count for comprehensive production. This is where blockchain technology in agriculture can lend a helping hand. By keeping complete records on the sort of crop and its expiration time, farmers can plan their sales as well as manage their resources befittingly. 

Once the product turns out to be a tradable community, anyone with access to the clearance, utilizing a blockchain, can check the commodity’s location and track the status of the crops. IoT technologies have already been used in agriculture to track goods via RFIDs and QR codes. Blockchain and internet-connected devices can power an immutable ledger that allows for seeing the status, location, and crop quality of every single unit. 

2. Accumulating data

Blockchain technology in agriculture can be synonymous to collect data on the nature of the seed, how harvests deploy, and recording the thorough crop journey once it has left the farm. 

For example, AgNext is a blockchain-enabled solution for food quality assessment, surveillance, and quality control. The company has been working on full-stack solutions, integrated with data analytics features, that aim to prevent quality-related concerns in the post-harvest agriculture supply chain. 

3. Public Accountability and Crop Insurance

Like with many other issues, investment in the agriculture business, accounting, and financial support are not always transparent to those who contribute from the seed of financial aid. Predominantly, a transparent distributed ledger would resolve the accountability problems. 

On the same note, the lack of records also affects farmers’ inability to make financial support claims. In this case, the implementation of a straightforward insurance system working on the blockchain can give an edge over unproductive red tape. 

Now, we are almost done with our discussion on “what is the role of blockchain in agriculture”. But there’s a bonus read that will help you comprehend implementing blockchain in agri-business on the right note. 

How Debut Infotech Can Help Revolutionize Agribusiness?

Want to improve the trackability of agriculture products and the transparency of the supply chain for your agribusiness? 

Debut Infotech can be your partner team who are worldwide most preeminent for digitizing the Agri supply chains with innovative solutions!

We have worked on many blockchain-embracing agriculture supply chain projects that solve the biggest challenges to save money or streamline the entire process and structure. 

So, to get started, get in touch with us. Our seasoned team will guide you through the comprehensive development process and help take your business to the next level.