Blockchain in Agriculture Traceability Systems: A Review

Abstract

Food holds a major role in human beings’ lives and in human societies in general across the planet. The food and agriculture sector is considered to be a major employer at a worldwide level. The large number and heterogeneity of the stakeholders involved from different sectors, such as farmers, distributers, retailers, consumers, etc., renders the agricultural supply chain management as one of the most complex and challenging tasks. It is the same vast complexity of the agriproducts supply chain that limits the development of global and efficient transparency and traceability solutions. The present paper provides an overview of the application of blockchain technologies for enabling traceability in the agri-food domain. Initially, the paper presents definitions, levels of adoption, tools and advantages of traceability, accompanied with a brief overview of the functionality and advantages of blockchain technology. It then conducts an extensive literature review on the integration of blockchain into traceability systems. It proceeds with discussing relevant existing commercial applications, highlighting the relevant challenges and future prospects of the application of blockchain technologies in the agri-food supply chain.

Information and Communication Technology Solutions for the Circular Economy

“…A block is a record which contains data, a value with the hash (digital fingerprint of an amount of data of the block) of the previous block, and a value that represents its own hash. The meaning of the cryptographically linked chain of blocks through these hashes can be explained by the link between the hash of the current block and the hash of the previous block [83]. Balakrishna et al analyze the potential to improve the effectiveness of the organic food supply chain, using the blockchain technology [84].…”

“…Smart contracts are just like contracts in the real world, with the difference that they are fully digital. They are small script programs, which are used and stored in blockchains, featuring a tamper-proof logic code within them [83]. Alexaki et al describe a solution for regulated circular healthcare jurisdictions using the blockchain and smart contract technologies.…”

Big data for corporate social responsibility: blockchain use in Gioia del Colle DOP

“…Feng and Wang wrote an article about blockchain-based solutions for addressing food traceability concerns, traceability systems implementation by proposing an architecture design framework and suitability application analysis flowchart of blockchain based food traceability systems (Feng et al 2020 ). In a similar way, the article by Demestichas also deals with the topic of traceability in terms of the Internet of Things and Blockchain, but also gives a great vivacity to the existing literature (Demestichas et al 2020 ). A more stable and adaptable approach is given, again in this sector, by Patelli and Mandrioli.…”

Survey on Security Threats in Agricultural IoT and Smart Farming

“…Agriculture stakeholders must focus on the possible attacks featured in detail previously such as: data privacy and integration, risk management (also in relation to third parties), integrity protection, non-repudiation, trusted origin, access control, scalability and robustness in terms of points of failure [ 62 , 79 , 80 , 112 ] in order to enhance cybersecurity. To address these challenges, some emerging architectures embedded blockchain technology in order to ensure data privacy and integrity, addressing space, fault tolerance, trusted origin and accountability, access control, removal of third-party risks, prevention of illegal use of personal (private) data, as well as protection of the sharing of IoT network information [ 112 , 113 ]. In summary, prior research for the enhancement of security and privacy in IoT and ICT applications in the agricultural sector falls under six main categories according to Ferrag et al [ 79 ]: (i) privacy-preserving solutions; (ii) data integrity solutions; (iii) authentication solutions; (iv) access control solutions; (v) data confidentially solutions; and (vi) blockchain-based solutions and consensus algorithms.…”