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Numerous business factors motivate the adoption of blockchain technology in the Agriculture sector. The first and the topmost key factor behind adopting blockchain technology in agriculture is eliminating bad actors and poor processes involved in the food supply chain. For example, AgriDigital is a cloud-based platform designed using blockchain technology to provide an efficient interface for the agriculture supply chain.
The second key factor is to create trust among consumers and retailers about the originality and authenticity of food products. For example, ripe.io is an organization that provides a blockchain-based platform with this sole purpose.
Blockchain technology can open up new market areas for food producers, specifically farmers from developing nations. For example, AgriLedger adopts the distributed ledger technology to open up new market areas for the farmers.
We broadly classify the typical use-cases of blockchain technology in the agriculture sector as below:
* Crowd-funding for the development of agricultural products Entrepreneurs and start-up organizations have been increasingly using blockchain as crypto-currencies or digitized tokens to raise capital for their entrepreneurial ventures. This mode of application is generally known as Initial Coin Offerings (ICO). The ICOs are a type of digitized financial instruments that farmers can monetize through crypto-currencies or fiat currencies. The NagriCoin is one such application, which has raised capital to develop innovative fertilizers that stimulate plant growth.
* Development of agricultural supply chain management Various business factors drive blockchain technology for the agricultural supply chain management. First, paying the farmers their due share in food production is the key motivating factor behind the adoption of blockchain technology for the food supply chain. The second most important factor is to address the concerns about food safety in the minds of consumers. For example, the AgriDigital is a cloud-based supply chain management platform primarily supporting the supply chain for grains. The objective of such platforms is to effectively connect the various operators in the supply chain, such as farmers, distributors, storage operators, retailers and consumers. The creation of digital assets representing physical products, recording and tracking their flow within the supply chain are the main functionalities offered by such platforms. They implement it by providing a set of smart contracts executing over a blockchain implementation such as Ethereum.
* Tracking and Traceability Assuring about the quality of food products and agricultural commodities is one of the main challenges faced by agriculture and food processing industries. Consumers expect authenticity about food products in terms of composition, origin, and purity. These expectations are valid when the food products are costly, consumed at a distant place far from their origin, and directly linked to consumers' health and safety. Providing accurate and verifiable information about the composition and origin of the food product is one solution to address this challenge. Blockchain technology plays this role precisely while tracking and tracing the source of food production. The blockchain-based solutions to address this problem are typically built around the immutability feature of the blockchain along with other technologies such as DNA marking, RFID tagging, QR coding, and isotope testing.
* Blockchain-based financial products for farmers Conventional financial institutes such as banks, insurance companies and cooperative credit societies face the challenge of including small farmers in the mainstream economic sectors. This situation leads to the undue exploitation of farmers by illegal money lenders and traders. Blockchain, as a technology initially emerged as a payment system through digital currencies (e.g., Bitcoin), can be used to provide financial products specially designed for farmers.
The $AgriWallet$ is one such example of a saving scheme designed and implemented by COIN22 for smallholder farmers to manage the risk associated with droughts, floods, and low-yield of crops.
Also, blockchain technology is currently being explored by many companies and government agencies to provide agriculture insurance, micro-credit, and subsidy transfer \cite{bermeo2018blockchain}.
Mapping the physical commodity to the digital artefact is one of the challenges faced while designing such platforms. Development engineer can address this challenge using the Internet-of-Things (IoT) and various sensors, and blockchain technology. The sustainable goal of ensuring zero hunger (SDG 2) and no poverty (SDG 1) is indirectly supported by the extensive adoption of blockchain technology in the agriculture sector.
