Blockchain Improves Food Quality and Accessibility, Study Finds

Blockchain technology transforms food supply chains by enhancing transparency, traceability and security, reducing waste, improving food quality and fostering sustainability. It ultimately benefits communities, producers and merchants while addressing critical ESG concerns.

FREMONT, CA: Communities and lives across the globe can be improved by effectively managing food supply networks through real-time tracking that guarantees adherence to environmental, social and governance (ESG) norms, promotes sustainability and reduces food waste.

On the other hand, companies that manage the food supply chain using a traditional method struggle with efficiency, security and transparency. The results can be disastrous, ranging from food waste to contamination-related death.

There is a way to enhance everyone's standard of living worldwide while simultaneously strengthening the management of the food supply chain. Blockchain technology makes food availability and quality improvements throughout the global supply chain possible, offering much-needed transparency, traceability, privacy and coordination among diverse stakeholders.

Experiencing the difficulties of the modern supply chain management strategy, a prominent agritech company, Silal Fresh, struggled to track its items throughout its supply chain. Traceability gaps made determining the origin of food quality problems complex, which could compromise food safety.

Beyond traceability issues, today's food producers and sellers also have to deal with security, privacy and communication issues. Only 7 percent of supply chain leaders attain multi-tier transparency, and 45 percent have visibility only for their first-tier suppliers due to the frequent transit of products across several touchpoints with little information sharing. The robustness of the supply chain is weakened by this lack of visibility, making it harder for merchants to foresee interruptions, track and trace things in real-time, comply with compliance reporting requirements and provide quality assurance.

Furthermore, privacy and security issues have made food quality and delivery more difficult because upstream suppliers frequently conceal information about operations, sourcing and pricing to keep a competitive edge, which leads to an imbalance in information exchange.

Understanding the need for increased traceability and transparency, Silal Fresh implemented blockchain technology by including a management system that allows all stakeholders to see a clear picture of a product's journey by logging each touchpoint into a shared ledger. Combining consumer apps, a web-based dashboard and connection with pre-existing systems, their blockchain-based solution enhanced the capacity to identify delivery delays, increasing customer happiness, confidence and brand loyalty. Each piece of produce now has QR codes that consumers can scan to track its path.

With blockchain, supply chain players can create a network in which they individually function as nodes, facilitating fine-grained information sharing that is impossible with older systems. Universal permissions, for example, make sharing data supporting sustainability initiatives easier while limiting access to private data, such as distributor fees. Its dispersed structure enhances supply chain security as well.

Blockchain technology transforms food supply chains, helping food producers and merchants improve food quality and accessibility by changing the way we record and access data, which benefits communities both now and in the future.