Blockchain for agricultural supply chain

Summary

The video script explores the complexities of the agricultural supply chain and introduces blockchain as a solution. It highlights challenges like tracking provenance and transparency. The example of mango cultivation in Uttar Pradesh, India, illustrates how blockchain ensures trust and efficiency through smart contracts, benefiting stakeholders like Raj Kishor, Mohan, and Charles Becker in Germany.

Takeaways

• 🌐 **Complexity in Agricultural Supply Chain**: The agricultural supply chain involves multiple stakeholders and processes, making it difficult to track and trace the produce.
• 📈 **Challenges in Provenance Tracking**: Importers struggle to verify the origin and quality of produce due to the sequential and opaque nature of the supply chain.
• 🏢 **Centralized Bodies Lack Trust**: Private agencies that certify produce are not always trusted by international importers.
• 🚦 **Delays in Information Flow**: Sequential information flow between stakeholders can lead to delays in decision-making processes.
• 🔒 **Blockchain as a Solution**: Blockchain technology can provide a trustworthy and transparent system for all stakeholders.
• 📝 **Smart Contracts for Trustless Transactions**: Smart contracts enable transactions without the need for a centralized authority, increasing trust among untrusted stakeholders.
• 📱 **Real-time Information Access**: Each stakeholder has access to the same distributed ledger, allowing for near real-time updates and transparency.
• 🥭 **Case Study: Mango Cultivation**: The script uses the example of mango cultivation in Uttar Pradesh to illustrate how blockchain can streamline the supply chain.
• 📑 **Certification and Invoices on Blockchain**: The use of blockchain ensures that all certifications and invoices are recorded and accessible to all relevant parties.
• 🚚 **Logistics and Delivery Tracking**: The logistics process, including pickup and delivery, is updated on the blockchain, ensuring transparency and traceability.
• 🌍 **Global Acceptance of Produce**: Blockchain increases the acceptance of Indian produce globally by ensuring transparency and trust in the supply chain.

Q & A

What is a typical agricultural supply chain?

A typical agricultural supply chain involves a complex set of interconnected processes between various stakeholders, such as producers, inspection and insurance companies, logistics and shipping agencies, manufacturers, and importers, before the produce reaches the consumer.

What are some of the challenges faced in the agricultural supply chain?

Challenges include difficulty in tracking provenance, tracing the place of origin and quality of produce, lack of trust in centralized certification bodies, sequential information flow causing potential delays, and overall lack of transparency leading to loss of track of transactions.

How does blockchain technology address these challenges?

Blockchain technology allows any activity to be documented and stored in a distributed ledger with consensus among all stakeholders, making the network more trustworthy. It enables untrusted stakeholders to transact through smart contracts without a centralized body and provides real-time information access to all stakeholders.

Who is Raj Kishor and what is his role in the supply chain?

Raj Kishor is a mango cultivator from Uttar Pradesh who sells his mango produce in bulk to Mohan, who owns the Royal Pulp Factory.

What is Mohan's role in the supply chain?

Mohan, the owner of the Royal Pulp Factory, receives orders to export mango pulp, such as from Charles Becker in Germany, and is responsible for processing the mangoes into pulp and managing the export logistics.

How does the blockchain network facilitate transactions between Raj and Mohan?

The contracts between Raj and Mohan are stored as smart contracts on the blockchain network. Once the mangoes are harvested and the logistics company delivers them to Mohan's warehouse, the smart contract is executed, and the payment is initiated through an open account transfer.

What happens when the mango pulp is ready to be shipped to Charles Becker?

The pulp is inspected and certified, an invoice is issued to Charles, and once the bill of lading is uploaded by the shipping company, the smart contract between Mohan and Charles is executed, and the payment is initiated.

How does Charles Becker benefit from the blockchain network?

Charles Becker can remotely track the provenance of the mango pulp from India, ensuring transparency and trust in the quality and origin of the product.

What is the significance of the distributed ledger in the blockchain network?

Every stakeholder has their own copy of the distributed ledger, which ensures that all have access to the same information and can verify transactions, increasing trust and reducing the need for a centralized authority.

How does blockchain technology increase the acceptance of Indian produce globally?

Blockchain technology ensures transparency in every transaction through a trustworthy private network, which can increase the acceptance of Indian produce globally by providing reliable information about the origin and quality of the produce.

What is the role of smart contracts in the agricultural supply chain?

Smart contracts automate and execute transactions based on predefined conditions, such as the delivery of goods or the certification of produce, without the need for intermediaries, thus streamlining the supply chain process.