Blockchain for the Food Supply Chain: All You Need to Know (2024)

Food supply chain control

End-to-end traceability of multi-party transactions across all food supply chain levels for streamlined food supply chain control with reduced disruption risks.

Food fraud prevention

Tracing and storing data on the food origin and chain of custodyto easily verify food authenticity and prevent fraud and counterfeiting.

Food safety control

Recording and monitoring data on farming practices, food product ingredients and their expiration dates, food storage and transportation conditions to timely identify potential points of food spoilage and contamination and prevent the distribution of unsafe food.

Food quality control

Recording and monitoring data on the food quality control procedures across food processing, manufacturing, distribution, and other stages, automated compliance checks to assure high food quality in accordance with global and internalstandards.

Food selling and purchasing

Providing ablockchain-based marketplacefor secure tradingof food commodities and ready-to-use food products and full traceability of ordering, payment, and fulfillment transactions.

Food claim management

Providing the proof of food provenance and a completehistory of food supply chain transactions to resolve claim disputes (e.g., on food quality or authenticity) and prevent recalls.

Food supplier selection

Recordingdata on food supplier pre-qualification, essential documents, performance indicators in a decentralized ledger for multi-tier supplier data monitoring,transparent supplier scoring and selection.

Food labeling

Recording a full history of food products’ origin, movement, and transformation to assure accurate product labeling and maintain compliance with the necessaryfood labeling regulations.

Automated recordkeeping

All transactions between the food supply chain participants and relevant product data from the connected systems (e.g., data on food manufacturing processes and product ingredients from ERP) are automatically validated, timestamped and recorded in blockchain.

A distributed ledger available to all food supply chain participants provides an immutable record and real-time view of all transactions between the involved parties, including food purchase orders, transfer of ownership, transfer of responsibility, payments, recalls, and more.

Food provenance tracking

Blockchain for food stores a complete history of data on a product journey from its origin through manufacturing, storage, transportation, and quality control processes to end consumers. Once recorded, food provenance data becomes immutable and can be accessed at any point.

QR code-enabled access to the blockchain data

End consumers can easily access food provenance data, certificates of origin and testing documentation stored in blockchain with their smartphones by scanning a QR code on the product package.

Real-time monitoring of food location, transportation and storage conditions

Combined with IoT technology, blockchain allows the food chain participants to monitor real-time location, transportation and storage conditions (temperature, humidity, vibration, etc.) for food products in transit and in the warehouse. The involved parties are instantly notifiedabout non-compliant food logistics or conditions.

A full audit trail for the food supply chain documents

Blockchain records and stores data on all manipulations across the food supply chain documents, including those assuring the supplier qualification (e.g., accreditations, licenses), food origin and quality (e.g., certificates of origin, certificates of analysis), product ownership transfer (e.g., bills of lading, receipts), and more.

Blockchain enables automated processing of domestic and cross-border payments between the food supply chain participants in a secure, near-instant manner. It eliminates the need for intermediaries, which helps significantly reduce processing costs.

Regulatory reporting

Blockchain for the food industry allows supply chain stakeholders automatically generate regulatory reports in compliance with the relevant legal requirements. Regulators can access reports in the blockchain network to verify the report accuracy and comprehensiveness.

Self-executing protocols (smart contracts) automatically enforce fixed actions, pre-agreed by the food supply chain participants, upon the pre-defined events (e.g., making a payment to the supplier upon product delivery, checking food safety compliance against required safety standards during food farming, processing, manufacturing).

Hashing

The food supply chain data integrity is achieved via hashing. Each blockchain data block has a unique cryptographic identifier (a hash value) and contains the hash value of the previous block. If data stored in one block is modified, the hash value in this and all subsequent blocks changes, which makes the data tamper-evident.

Configurable user access rules

The food supply chains mainly rely on permissioned blockchains, where the rights to transact, view or share particular data can be configured for various food supply chain participants (e.g., suppliers, manufacturers, retailers).

Consensus-based data validation

In permissioned blockchains, consensus on transactions validation and their storage in a particular order is achieved via selective endorsem*nt, where only known and trusted food supply chain members with special rights can validate the transactions.

We engaged ScienceSoft to develop an end-to-end blockchain platform for wine supply chain traceability, and they took the project to unprecedented heights. They treated our product as their own and made sure it was commercially and technically viable from the onset. Their PM stayed in touch religiously and never let the project go off the track, even when we had to make unplanned changes.

Challenge #1: Analysis of the food supply chain data

Blockchain technology cannot provide the advanced analytics required for effective food supply chain management.

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Challenge #2: Protection of the food supply chain information

Although the permissioned blockchain for the food supply chain provides advanced data security, it can be susceptible to certain types of cyberthreats, such as routing attacks, phishing attacks, and code exploitation.

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