Are Distributed Ledger Technologies the panacea for food traceability?

The rise of blockchain technology in agriculture and food supply chains

“…There are various challenges for the wider adoption of blockchain technology, which are mentioned in related work under study and also in relevant survey and position papers (Chang, Iakovou and Shi 2019), (Galvez, Mejuto and Simal-Gandara 2018), (Hald and Kinra 2019), (Tribis, El Bouchti and Bouayad 2018), (Zhao, et al 2019), (Pearson, et al 2019). Table 2 lists potential benefits and existing barriers for the use of blockchain in agriculture and the food supply chain, as identified in Section 5 and Sections 6.1-6.5 respectively, as well as in (Chang, Iakovou and Shi 2019), (Pearson, et al 2019). A case study in the Netherlands revealed that SME lack the required size, scale or know-how needed, in order to invest in blockchain by themselves (Ge, et al 2017).…”

“…On the one hand, permanent data visibility might compromise privacy issues and could eventually strengthen the surveillance power of centralized entities. On the other hand, large corporations might implement private and permissioned blockchains that could underpin oligopolistic practices (Pearson, et al 2019).…”

“…Policy development and regulation in relation to blockchain practices is both a necessity and an important barrier for its wider adoption (Zhao, et al 2019), (Pearson, et al 2019). As cryptocurrencies form the most complete to date global blockchain study case (Yli-Huumo, et al 2016), the current experience of analyzing these cryptocurrencies indicates that they are vulnerable to speculators and their price has large fluctuations almost daily.…”

“…everyone can join) or closed systems (Jayachandran 2017)? Who should own the blockchain (Pearson, et al 2019)? Observing the existing permission-less blockchains, the latency of transactions might be several minutes up to some hours to finish, until all participants update their ledgers and the smart contracts become publicly accessible.…”

The Impact of Resource and Nutritional Resilience on the Global Food Supply System

“…This is because the transfer of data cannot now be corrupted, edited or changed if supply chain assessments use standardised distributed ledger technologies (DLT's) that use real-time cloud computing platforms [18]. The inclusion of metrics that can report security and sustainability outcomes of different food and feed categories in these systems is nothing short of revolutionary because of the ability to scale sustainability assessment across supply chains [19]. These all need suitable metrics to be developed that measure impacts across supply chains; these are described in the methodology reported in this research.…”