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SEED-TO-SALE SECURIT Y
The promise of blockchain in agriculture
BY CARLA STONE
Today, more than ever, consumers are concerned about the source of their food. Unless they are able to purchase produce or meat straight from the farm, however, they may have no idea where it is being produced. In Delaware, we are fortunate that our agricultural industry is so attuned to customers’ needs and demands. The same types of technology used in the banking industry is used by food producers to ensure traceability along the supply chain.
In September 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced the FSMA Proposed Rule for Food Traceability that standardizes traceability practices for high-risk foods.
It identified growing, receiving, transforming, creating, and shipping as the “critical tracking events” for which records containing key data elements would be required. World Trade Center Delaware member Produce Marketing Association provides expertise and information about the use of blockchain to help companies with traceability.
Meanwhile, Corteva Agriscience, a global agricultural chemical and seed company based in Wilmington, identifies technology such as robotics, mobile computing and networks of the Internet of Things (IoT) as enabling companies to collect, match and connect information throughout the supply chain.
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“All the food we buy would have a transparent set of interconnected tech-enabled checkpoints that consumers could gain insight into. Ideally, each individual unit of produce harvested would be assigned traceable data points indicating the farm and location, a lot number to show the specific field where it was grown, the date of harvest, the workers who harvested it, the date and location where it was packed, the workers who packed, to whom the lot was sold, how and by whom it was transported, the temperature and humidity conditions under which it was transported, and how and to whom the produce was distributed,” Corteva reported in 2020
The company has said that blockchain, the same distributed ledger system used most prominently in the financial sector, could be used in the agriculture industry to monitor the entire supply chain.
Think of it. Simply by scanning a QR code on the tag for a bunch of grapes, consumers will be able to see their grapes’ path from their fields in Chile, via ocean shipment to the Port of Wilmington, then transport by truck or rail to the Midwest, and finally distribution to their local grocery store in Chicago, much as UPS traces individual packages from seller to buyer. This is the promise of FinTech in agriculture.