Food Provenance & Blockchain: Ensuring Integrity & Identity

The Importance of Food Integrity & Identity

Addressing the sustainable supply of food represents one of the most substantial challenges for humanity. The global food system is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, climate change, and loss of biodiversity. Illegal overfishing nets up to $36.4 billion each year for criminals, while putting more than one-third of sharks, rays, and chimeras at risk of extinction. Food security is equally critical -- approximately 44 million Americans have difficulty getting enough food, while globally 155 million people are affected by food shortages. One in ten people get sick from food-borne illnesses each year with an estimated 420,000 people dying. And in the USA in 2017, 36 million pounds of imported corn and soybeans were fraudulently labeled organic.

• Food Sustainability: Global system driving emissions and biodiversity loss
• Food Security: 155 million people affected by shortages worldwide
• Food Safety: 420,000 deaths annually from food-borne illnesses
• Food Fraud: Billions in fraudulently labeled products each year

Blockchain's Food Provenance Promise

You don't need to fully understand blockchain technology to use and benefit from it -- just like you don't need to understand JavaScript to browse the internet. Blockchain is a digital ledger that records transactions, maintained by a network of computers that all contain a copy. Think of it as a public library where anyone can view and add entries, each recorded with a timestamp and signature. The information stored could be financial, like digital currencies, but it could also be digital invoices, supply chain movements, event tickets, or tokenised real-world assets. This inherent provenance means we can identify the owner of any asset, verify its authenticity, and see full transparency of its movements.

Internationally Recognised Potential

International organisations have recognised blockchain as a tool for combating food-related issues. The European Innovation Council awarded 1 million euros to London-based Provenance so businesses can prove their social impact across supply chains. They successfully tested blockchain-based solutions on the Indonesian tuna supply chain, where fishermen send an SMS after each catch, giving it a digital ID that enables tracking through the supply chain. The World Economic Forum has agreed that blockchain's ability to capture data along the supply chain makes it a fast and efficient way to pinpoint where contamination or safety issues may have originated.

From helping those with limited access to bank accounts to tracking tuna -- the applications are broad. -- Tatsiana Hulko, United Nations

Blockchain Food Provenance Use Cases

Tony's Chocolonely developed Beantracker to digitally trace cocoa beans from source to chocolate bar, fighting modern slavery in the chocolate industry. The WWF and BCG Digital Ventures launched OpenSC to track food and products, helping avoid illegal or unethical goods. GoGo Chicken uses blockchain and location-tracking to monitor poultry and prove whether chickens are organic, with each chicken wearing a tracking device that uploads real-time data to the blockchain. Walmart partnered with IBM, Nestle, and Unilever to trace perishable foods, reducing the time to track information from one week to 2.2 seconds. And the World Food Programme uses retina scans and blockchain-based transaction logs to track food distributions in Jordan's Azraq refugee camp.

The Other Side of the Coin

Using blockchain technology well takes careful planning and wide collaboration. The food supply chain is vast and complex, requiring alignment from industry stakeholders, producers, financial institutions, governments, and consumers. Commercial sensitivities and privacy concerns resulting from such levels of transparency remain real obstacles. Smaller producers may struggle to implement solutions and compete. System vulnerabilities like data availability, hardware connectivity, and software latency add technical barriers. And there are concerns about how the technology could be used to maximise profitability at the expense of farmers.

Blockchain's Food Provenance Potential

The implications of ignoring food integrity, safety, and sustainability are real and far-reaching. Blockchain's potential for reduced food costs and improved access, more efficient product recalls and safer food, increased transparency and sustainable supply chains, ethical labor practices, and greater control and clarity into our food supply are all compelling promises. While it's still early days, the use cases and international recognition suggest blockchain will play a growing role in ensuring we know what's on our plates.