A Spoonful of Sugar and Blockchain in my Coffee, please
The Coffee Board of India, an organization promoting coffee production in India launched a pilot blockchain e-marketplace in collaboration with Eka Plus, a platform for agricultural management. The Indian Ministry of Commerce Industry (MCI) publicly announcing the project on March 28, 2019. Business Line publication states that there are 350,000 coffee growers in India.
The project aims to expand to all coffee growers in India upon success of the “from bean to cup” supply chain pilot, focusing on transparency and traceability of the coffee chain. A goal is to reduce the intermediaries between coffee farmers and purchasers using blockchain technology.
Blockchain has been actively adopted by food producers globally to create efficiency in supply chains. In February 2019, the Chinese government declared a new framework to promote the use of blockchain in the agriculture finance sector. In Europe, French President Emmanuel Macron supported the innovation of supply chain management in European agriculture.
“Blockchain can bring transparency to agricultural production and distribution to assuage mounting consumer concerns about products’ provenance and sustainability”
- Emmanuel Macron, French President
Reportlinker’s “Blockchain: Agriculture Market Forecast until 2023” foresees the sector growing from its current worth of $60.8 million to $429.7 million to be worth over $400 million by 2023.
Blockchain can help combat emerging difficulties in the industry such as so-called “food fraud” that refers to deceptive labeling, the lack of food purity, and more. The estimated food fraud cases cost $49 billion to the global food industry annually (2014 data from the Grocery Manufacturers Association).
People around the globe are demanding more evidence- how do I know that that the corn is organic or grown locally? Who produced the corn? When was the corn harvested? Who shipped the corn? Blockchain provides traceability of the chain of events in moving the product from farm to consumer table. The data resides in tamper-proof blocks on the chain and discrete information can be passed on to the buyer.
Many reasons to apply blockchain technology to the food chain and watch it impact the quality of our lives. Come to #TiECon 2019 Enterprise Blockchain track to discover the new frontiers of the technology with leading blockchain experts. Register at www.TiEcon.org
