Food Supply Chains Using Block chain Technology: Jaggery Traceability use Case

Abstract

Food provides nourishment and energy to all living beings and getting safe and uncontaminated food is the right of every individual. The food travels to the consumer from the producer in a supply chain. Supply chain is a network of actors to deliver food products to the consumer. The large number and heterogeneity of the stakeholders involved from different sectors, such as producers, distributors, retailers, customers, and quality checkers, render agricultural supply chain management one of the most complex and challenging tasks. Nowadays, the customers are unaware of the events happening to the supply chain items, which creates a lack of trust in their minds. So, the solution to this problem can be implemented efficiently using Blockchain technology. This paper is intended to explore transparency in the supply chain of food products by using Blockchain technology. It allows for decentralized data storage and provides immutability. The decentralized data storage makes it impossible for an unauthorized actor to tamper with the data. Our study in the food supply chains helped us to understand that more and more applications providing traceability and transparency in the food supply chain are being developed in many parts of the world. Though, there are certain hurdles in using blockchain technology for food supply chain management such as abiding by the policies and regulatory frameworks put in place by various governmental agencies and organizations and getting the actors in the supply chain educated with the technology. This paper discusses relevant methodologies to replace the ongoing methods employed by the industry to trace products in the supply chain, thus leading to a massive decrease in cost and efforts for the stakeholders and making products cheaper for the customers. The blockchain could also be deployed on cloud services to increase availability and reliability. The methodologies presented in this paper can be used by any food manufacturing industry that wants to track the products better and explore transparency in the supplychain.