How Blockchain Benefits Agriculture And Food Industry In Future?

As per Worldometer, there are currently 7.8 billion people in the world and the count is increasing. The World Bank makes an estimate that this number will continuously grow reaching 9.7 billion by 2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100.

With such a growing population it is obvious that the food demand will increase significantly. To fulfill the food demand of the world population, the agriculture industry is making use of AI and other food automation techniques and technologies to meet the demands through innovative production.

The agriculture sector is immense, that is why it has to face numerous challenges that infect the sustainability of the industry. Beginning from labor work to a competitive marketplace, each and every issue ought to be addressed, otherwise the ecosystem may fall apart.

Blockchain can assist the agricultural and food sector to deal and manage predictable dangers and maintain affordability throughout the ecosystem. Below are some facts that state the use of blockchain in agriculture and its forecast in the coming years.

According to Statistics, the global market value of blockchain in the food and agriculture market which was about 32.2 million U.S. dollars in 2017 is projected to grow to about 1.4 billion U.S. dollars by 2028.

The Reportlinker.com in the release of its report ‘Blockchain In Agriculture And Food Supply Chain Global Market Report 2021: COVID-19 Growth And Change’ states that the global blockchain in agriculture and food supply chain market is expected to grow from $128.87 million (2020) to $189.48 million in 2021 at a compound annual growth rate of 47%.

The same report also states the expected market reach to $886.18 million in 2025 at a CAGR of 47.1%.

As we know that every coin has two sides, the same way there are two sides of every topic or product.  The way the expanding difficulties in the agriculture sector are making it impossible to look after sustainability. In the same way, use of blockchain in agriculture can improve this situation for good. Let’s read below to know how blockchain has become a boon for the agriculture business. But, first let’s start with what Blockchain agriculture is?

What Is Blockchain Agriculture?

In a layman’s language, blockchain agriculture means the use of blockchain in the agricultural sector to improve the operating process and get profitable results. The use of blockchain in the agricultural sector ranges from having a sustainable business and reduction of waste, to informed consumer purchasing decisions, to having smooth future transactions with fraud elimination.

There is a new term that has surfaced in the marketplace, Smart Agriculture. Smart agriculture includes the utilization of natural resources and the decrease of environmental impact through the execution of ICTs (information and communication technologies), blockchain, and other modern technologies for gathering and analyzing data.

How Is Blockchain Used In Agriculture?

Traditional frameworks with core control are frequently vulnerable against data corruption, as the authority running the framework can be one-sided and look to accomplish certain outcomes by inputting wrong data. Such platforms are frequently liable to cyber-attacks. Entrepreneurs are shifting to blockchain and understanding the working behind it for security and ease of transactions. 

Let’s see the uses of blockchain in the agriculture:

Farm inventory management

Truth be told, many farming organizations aren’t prepared to utilize cutting edge technology to deal with their inventories. This is actually leading to wastage of the produce and the resources. Also the losses are borne by farmers. Thus, this is a huge burden for the farmers, as they don’t have the required tools to manage the issue.

The use of blockchain technology here can change that situation for great. Blockchain in inventory management can help farmers by monitoring the storage climate and inform you when produce will expire. In this way, you can take legitimate measures.

Enhancing agricultural supply chain efficiency

Another incredible use of blockchain technology in farming is the expanded productivity throughout the industry. Due to the absence of use of automation and innovation, the productivity of this industry isn’t sufficient. Generally, it’s more prominent for the small to mid-range farmers to not have an approach for costly technologies to increase the proficiency of the production.

The future of blockchain in the supply chain can be very handy here. Utilizing a blockchain ledger system, it can rapidly address all of the components and diminish the costing of the farming cycles and increase the yield’s overall efficiency. Some of the benefits of blockchain for in agriculture supply chain are listed below.

Modernization of farm management software (FMS)

Another benefit of blockchain in agriculture is the modernization of farm management software. The farm management software will become mainstream soon in reality. Be that as it may, this product actually utilizes the typical customer server model to work. Thus, they are yet not capable of offering their maximum yield as they could with blockchain.

Hence, utilizing blockchain, for this situation, can help take the FMS to another level. All the more, this software will have the security they need with blockchain’s protection. The farmers need not stress over cyber hacks anymore. 

IoT optimization security in agriculture

To monitor the farm produce, the agriculture industry requires IoT devices. These devices can also considerably offer security and safety to their equipment. Utilizing the machines, they can record the climate and the land state and likewise change it. All the more along these lines, a few gadgets can even gauge normal catastrophes from already. Some devices also forecast natural calamities.

But the problem is that these devices are vulnerable as in many cases the cloud services that they use to store the data is frail to cyber-attacks. Blockchain can offer assistance here with its strong security protocol. The advantages of blockchain in farming will defend these IoT gadgets and offer them a superior networking system to work with.

Providing fair pricing

It is true that many farming organizations don’t get a reasonable price that they deserve for their produce. In spite of the fact that the produce of crops is good, numerous wholesalers actually don’t offer the value they deserve.

The situation can change using blockchain. Using the blockchain-based marketplace, the farmers can offer their produce to the fair purchasers and can even reach more purchasers than they could previously. This will assist them in negotiating the value more reasonably and fairly. Along these lines, the farmers can get what they genuinely deserve.

Microloans for small to mid-sized farmers

Another incredible blockchain use case in agriculture is the alternative to get microloans. Small to average sized farmers need loans every now and then to maintain and run their business. Nonetheless, the loan policy in banks has high interest. Thus, the organizations are in an upsetting circumstance as the interest costs can burden them with more loans.

Therefore, utilizing blockchain technology can settle the issue for good. Blockchain can assist the farmers with getting microloans on the network from lenders all throughout the globe. With a limited quantity of loan, they can take up the burden of small interest costs, assisting them with maintaining and running the business for a long time.

With worldwide food systems such as sea-food, almost 40% of which is traded internationally, here information transparency and discernibility through technologies like blockchain are significant for conscious decision making and to work with trust among partners. To state the solution, we will discuss the role of blockchain in food security and future agriculture.

Role Of Blockchain Technology In Agriculture And Food Security

Gathering information

Blockchain technology can be utilized to solidify data on the nature of the seed, track how harvests develop and record the crop journey once it leaves the farm.

For instance in Canada, an online blockchain marketplace- Grain Discovery is an illustration of information being utilized by those engaged with the food framework to develop and market worldwide competitive crops.

The data could also upgrade transparency in supply chains by giving immutable records from creation to consumption. Such information can possibly work with data transfer through every progression of the supply network. Furthermore, if blockchains are applied with appropriate approval, it can forestall illegal and unethical production and circulation that undermines sustainability and food security.

Tracking pathways

At present, there is little proof supporting the case that blockchain and big data innovations are adding to worldwide food security. Despite the fact that the normal farm is projected to produce 4.1 million data points by 2050, up from 190,000 data points in 2014, expansions in worldwide food security have not been great.

But despite this, companies are doing their bit to provide a transparent process, as people are looking forward to understand and know where their food is coming from. Below is the data that shows the percentage of people that demand for information about food.

For instance, IBM and Walmart have collaborated to track produce from farm to fork. Makers and processors along the inventory network are needed to include data into IBM’s blockchain for food traceability and for the process to be totally transparent to consumers. Noticing this use of blockchain, the agriculture software development companies are coming forward to benefit the agri sector.

Data and food futures

Before blockchain and other data innovations can help address food security, various challenges should be addressed.

The execution of blockchains should be decentralized to incorporate small farmers and rural individuals. This will empower sustainable and fair food systems and permit buyers to settle on informed choices.

As blockchains place additional duty on the end users, difficulties like restricted digital proficiency among the world’s poor and infrastructure constraints may undermine genuine decentralization. Likewise, they should be coordinated into more extensive food security advancement strategies to make them sensitive to social and ecological values, critical to handling food insecurity among different groups.

The undiscovered capability of harnessing big data through a transparent and decentralized food distribution framework may uphold sustainable food creation and provide responsibility for food production.

Parting Thoughts

The blockchain agriculture and blockchain food supply chain can change the existing traditional processes. More so, now that we have known the potential of using blockchain in agriculture development, the marketplace for the farmers is full of potential with the fair share of market value and efficient production through technology. 

Blockchain offers limited data management capabilities and sometimes companies with blockchain development services are better off developing a comprehensive database than using a distributed ledger. But the excitement surrounding blockchain technology is growing day by day. 

There has been a continuous attempt to fully adopt blockchain technology by the blockchain development company in USA with a massive potential for the agrifood sector.

THE AUTHOR

chirag

Blockchain Evangelist