Blockchain for agricultural supply chain

Infosys

26 Mar 201904:29

Summary

TLDRThe 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.

Outlines

00:00

🌐 Challenges in Agricultural Supply Chain

The paragraph discusses the intricacies of the agricultural supply chain, involving multiple stakeholders such as producers, inspectors, insurance companies, logistics, and shipping agencies. It highlights the difficulty in tracking the provenance and quality of produce due to the sequential and opaque nature of information flow. The paragraph introduces the concept of blockchain as a solution to increase transparency and trust among stakeholders by allowing them to document and store activities in a distributed ledger.

Mindmap

Keywords

💡Agricultural Supply Chain

An agricultural supply chain refers to the network of processes and entities involved in moving a product from the producer to the consumer. This includes various stakeholders such as producers, inspectors, insurance companies, logistics, and shipping agencies. In the video, the agricultural supply chain is highlighted as complex and interconnected, with challenges in tracking and transparency. The example of mango cultivation in Uttar Pradesh and its export to Germany illustrates the supply chain's operation.

💡Stakeholders

Stakeholders are the individuals or organizations that have an interest or share in the activities and outcomes of a supply chain. They can be producers, importers, logistics companies, or consumers. The video emphasizes the challenges stakeholders face, such as tracking provenance and trust issues, and how blockchain can provide transparency and trust among them.

💡Provenance

Provenance refers to the history of ownership or origin of an item. In the context of the video, it is a challenge for importers to track the origin and quality of agricultural produce as it moves through the supply chain. Blockchain offers a solution by documenting every transaction and making the product's history verifiable and transparent.

💡Blockchain

Blockchain is a decentralized, distributed ledger technology that allows data to be stored across a network of computers in a secure, tamper-proof manner. The video introduces blockchain as a solution to the transparency and trust issues in the agricultural supply chain by documenting every transaction in a distributed ledger.

💡Smart Contracts

Smart contracts are self-executing contracts with the terms of the agreement directly written into code. They automatically execute transactions once the conditions in the agreement are met. In the video, smart contracts are used to automate payments and transactions between stakeholders like Raj (the mango cultivator) and Mohan (the pulp factory owner) once certain conditions, such as delivery confirmation, are met.

💡Distributed Ledger

A distributed ledger is a database that is consensually shared and synchronized across multiple sites, institutions, or geographies. In the video, the distributed ledger ensures that every stakeholder has access to the same, up-to-date information, which is crucial for transparency and real-time decision-making in the supply chain.

💡Centralized Bodies

Centralized bodies refer to organizations or authorities that control or manage certain aspects of a system. The video mentions that centralized bodies, such as private agencies that certify crop produce, may not always be trusted by international importers. Blockchain aims to eliminate the need for such centralized trust by creating a decentralized network of trust.

💡Transparency

Transparency in a supply chain means that all the processes and transactions are open and easily understandable to all stakeholders. The video highlights the lack of transparency as a challenge and showcases how blockchain can increase transparency by providing a shared, tamper-proof record of all transactions.

💡Royal Pulp Factory

The Royal Pulp Factory is an example of a stakeholder in the agricultural supply chain mentioned in the video. It represents the processing stage where raw agricultural produce, like mangoes, is turned into a product like mango pulp. The factory's operations, including orders and shipments, are tracked and documented on the blockchain.

💡Becker Packaged Foods

Becker Packaged Foods is another stakeholder mentioned in the video, representing the importer of agricultural products. The company, owned by Charles Becker, is based in Germany and imports mango pulp from India. The video illustrates how blockchain enables Becker to remotely track the provenance and quality of the imported produce.

💡Global Acceptance

Global acceptance refers to the willingness of international markets to receive and trust products from other countries. The video suggests that by using blockchain to ensure transparency and trust in the supply chain, the acceptance of Indian agricultural produce, such as mango pulp, can be increased on the global stage.

Highlights

Agricultural supply chain involves complex processes between various stakeholders.

Challenges include difficulty in tracking provenance and understanding the quality of imported produce.

Centralized bodies may not be trusted by international importers.

Information flow is sequential, leading to potential delays.

Lack of transparency and tracking of transactions is a common issue.

Blockchain can document and store activities in a distributed ledger with consensus.

Smart contracts enable transactions without a centralized body.

Each stakeholder has a copy of the distributed ledger for real-time information access.

Raj Kishor specializes in mango cultivation in Uttar Pradesh.

Mohan owns the Royal pulp Factory and exports mango pulp to Charles Becker in Germany.

Contracts between stakeholders are stored on the blockchain as smart contracts.

Produce is certified with standard certificates and the process is transparent.

Once the mangoes are harvested, the invoice is generated, and logistics are arranged.

Delivery receipt is updated and available to all stakeholders on the network.

Smart contracts execute when consignment is accepted, initiating payments.

Mohan makes mango pulp, which is inspected and certified.

Charles Becker can track the provenance of the mango pulp from India.

Blockchain simplifies life for everyone in the supply chain, ensuring transparency.

Blockchain increases the acceptance of Indian produce globally.