Blockchain For Food
Food has a universal ability to make connections. The quest for finding food has dominated human existence, and has continued to occupy our efforts through the ages. The technology used for sourcing food has changed from early implements to modern machines, and the various industrial, agricultural and digital revolutions have accelerated the growth of the food industry from seed to table. Blockchain is one such technology that has the potential to rethink how our food gets to our table.
Blockchain is now more than just a buzzword. When Satoshi Nakamoto published the first Bitcoin whitepaper in 2008, blockchain made its first appearance as a viable technology in the form of cryptocurrencies. Since then, blockchain has moved beyond cryptocurrencies and found numerous applications in diverse domains such as supply chain logistics, education and gaming. While these applications might seem distant or niche to many, there is one application that we can all relate to: food.
Curiously enough, the first Bitcoin transaction was made by a Florida man, Laszlo Hanyecz on May 22, 2010. He agreed to pay 10,000 Bitcoins for two delivered Papa John’s pizzas.
“I’ll pay 10,000 bitcoins for a couple of pizzas… like maybe 2 large ones so I have some left over for the next day.”
— -Laszlo Hanyecz, May 22, 2010
Jeremy Sturdivant took him up on this offer. Jeremy paid around $25 for the pizzas, and received 10,000 bitcoins in exchange for the pizzas. Without thinking too much into the future, Jeremy had still made a profit from the transaction. The market value of 10,000 BTC at that time was around $41. Now, a little over a decade later, this transaction would have been more than 500 million USD.
May 22 is now celebrated as Bitcoin Pizza Day.
However, not all blockchain applications concerning food are this mind-bending. Blockchain for food is a growing industry, affecting all parts of the food ecosystem from farming to logistics to eliminating hunger. Below are use cases from five domains that show the potential of blockchain to transform the way food gets to our tables.
Starting from the seed: Grainchain is an example of how blockchain can be used to move agriculture into the Web 3.0. Using smart contracts, producer and buyer of the grain formalize the prices, dates and logistics of the order. The entire process from buying of seeds and equipment to preparation of the fields to harvest and delivery is tracked and recorded on the blockchain, thus rendering payments in real time.
The journey of ingredients: Blockchain has been used extensively in tracking the journey of our food. This kind of tracking makes it possible to rapidly identify farms, supply chain locations, vendors and retailers in case of a recall or the spread of disease, such as in the case of E. coli found in produce. In collaboration with IBM blockchain, Walmart has used blockchain for implementing food safety by digitizing the food supply chain. Other examples of blockchain in the food supply system include Fishcoin for traceability of seafood, sustainable fishing to prevent overfishing or illegally caught fish from entering the food supply, and Nestle’s use of the blockchain for traceability to track the journey of coffee beans grown through sustainable farming practices. The Malaysian Palm Oil Council has ventured to use blockchain for traceability of palm oil supply chains and revenues.
Feeding school children: The Akshaya Patra Foundation, headquartered in Bengaluru, India, tackles the problems of hunger and malnutrition. The Foundation’s Midday Meals program is the world’s largest meal program for children run by a non-government organization. Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra joined forces to revolutionize the Midday Meals program by using artificial intelligence (AI), Internet -of — Things (IoT) devices and blockchain to improve the efficiency and timeliness of meals delivered to school children in government-aided schools in India. The use of these technologies eliminated manual feedback from schools, and used data from IoT devices to predict the next day’s meal requirements, provided tracking for supply chain logistics for food preparation and delivery, and automated the invoicing and financial aspects of their operations.
Surplus food: With a powerful message that “wasted food is wasted money”, Goodr strives to tackle the problem of mismanaged resources in food distribution. Every year in the United States, 72 billion pounds of edible food is wasted, while 42 million people suffer from food insecurity. Goodr uses blockchain technology to keep records of what kind of food is wasted in businesses, as well as community connections who could use the food. Thus, Goodr redirects surplus food to organizations who need it for free, while charging businesses for the deliveries and distribution services.
UN World Food Programme: The UN World Food Programme is the largest organization delivering cash for humanitarian causes. Cash transactions are subject to fees of intermediary financial organizations, losing a portion of the potential impact to transaction fees, unreliable or insufficient sources along the way. Beginning in 2017, the Building Blocks initiative at the WFP began with a pilot program in Sindh, Pakistan for testing the transfer of funds through direct, secure and fast transactions without the use of financial intermediaries. The success and feedback of this pilot program led to a second initiative, this time in collaboration with UN Women for grocery and cash distribution in two refugee camps in Jordan. Here, a combination of biometric technology and blockchain was used to keep records of groceries and cash transactions that were distributed to people living in the camps. Eliminating financial transaction fees and the need to maintain identity in the form of cards, blockchain technology ensured savings of about 98% of bank transaction fees, while enabling transparency, security, efficiency and privacy.
Summary
Blockchain technology offers a way to reimagine the status quo of food generation and distribution. The inherently distributed nature of blockchain, coupled with the immutability and transparency of blockchain enables fine-grained tracking of our food, and holds the promise to accelerate sustainable farming practices. Web 3.0 is here, and blockchain will lead the way by addressing some of our most pressing issues, including food.
Renita Murimi is an Associate Professor of Cybersecurity at the University of Dallas. Her research interests are in the areas of network science, blockchain and cybersecurity. She was also part of the first cohort of the DLT Talents programs at the Frankfurt School Blockchain Center.
