Can Blockchain Food Track and Trace Be Implemented By Farmers, Fishermen, and Producers? (forbes.com)
Of all the many emerging blockchain use cases for enterprises, supply chain track and trace is a hot topic. The idea that food especially can be safely and securely traced from farm to table is something that benefits many players in the production sector. 

For the consumers, there is a growing desire to know for certain their food is from where it says it is from; promoting sustainability and better food production. For the food companies, an efficient and secure supply chain offers enormous benefits for the business and eventually leads to money-saving down the line. 

Even for the farmers and food producers, there are benefits involved, yet, those are not as widely publicized or well known. Farmers want their product to be bought and traded fairly, as well as truly represented when it reaches the plates of the population, but there is a lot more that blockchain can do for the men in the fields and on the boats. 

A Scallop pilot
As part of this collaboration, a fleet of scallopers owned by Capt. Danny Eilertsen of New Bedford, MA, will begin uploading data about their catch onto the platform, enabling distributors and retailers to identify precisely when and where a given lot of scallops were harvested. 

The platform will also track when the boat landed portside, and when each scallop lot was hand graded, selected, packed, and shipped to its final destination. This information, as well as images and video, is uploaded via satellite to a distributed ledger while still offshore. 

Once it is uploaded, this information is then available to permissioned parties, including distributors, suppliers, retailers, and their customers at point of sale.It is a bold undertaking and one that has a lot of data injected into it onto the blockchain; but it all starts with the fishermen, in this case, and it is an important starting point. 

I spoke with Dan McQuade, Vice President of Raw Seafoods Inc, to ask him about how these new technologies will affect, and benefit the fishermen and food producers at the grassroots levels.

The technology is a tool for retailers and buyers of these scallops, as well as the consumers, but McQuade also explains how it will be used to help fishermen.

“The boat owners and captains who have this technology can use it to assess how the location of their harvest is producing,” he told me. “This includes information like the number of scallops, the sizes and the exact location, and the yields.

Additionally, the boat owners can also measure the quality of the work the crew is producing by the shift, for example, whether the scallops are shucked and cleaned correctly. So you’re also increasing quality assurance.”“Collecting this data will hopefully help boatowners ensure their catch is valued more by buyers than scallops without that record of provenance.

”I was also interested to hear how these fishermen were to use this advanced technology and how it had been tailored for ease of use on a rocking boat.“The system is also easy to use, thanks to a seamless UX developed by IBM in tandem with Marel, our food processing software provider.

The data from the server outputs in the exact format needed to ‘land’ on the ledger. What this means is that crews can submit the harvest via satellite communication, either in real-time or at set times for a batch upload of the individual bag data,” McQuade added.

Incentivized operations

While this new system will add many benefits to the fishermen, it will also involve them far more than before.

Rather than landing dockside and dispensing with their catch and their responsibilities, there is a lingering involvement for them.

“For generations, fishermen who land their harvest never knew where it ended up. They unload dockside, and their involvement with that fish is over,” explained McQuade.

“This gives boatowners little incentive to do an exceptional job handling the raw material, upgrading their vessels or improving systems and quality. In short, they really know whether ‘it really matters.’ There are too many degrees of separation between them and the consumer.

Now we can connect captains to consumers, allow them to share their experiences.

”“Helping captains understand the next stage in their scallops’ journey will affect how they initially handle the product, ultimately leading to better shelf life, better yields, and better consumer experience as far as taste and quality.

Boat owners can also take these insights back to the point of the harvest, where processors like us can reward them with higher prices as the supply chain “shrink of value” begins to dissipate. Everyone in the supply chain wins.

”McQuade pained a rather good example of how this blockchain interconnectivity can work “We’re already seeing this happen. Thanks to this platform, a chef who thinks their scallops were particularly good one week can call up the ship captain 3000 miles away who produced the catch and tell them directly.

On the other hand, if a chef thinks the night’s scallops are too sandy or poorly shucked, they can call up the captain and tell them that too.

”It starts from the bottomKey to this entire empire of blockchain track and trace sustainable food production is where the supply chain starts - at the docks or the fields.

If there is a failure of information from the outset, the entire technology advancement can fall on its face. This is something McQuade is all too aware of.

“The real beauty of Food Trust — for us but also the fishermen we work with — is the simplicity.

Although it may be an ‘advanced’ technology, IBM made it incredibly easy to onboard and integrate into our existing tracking and receiving systems.” “We really only need a high-level understanding, and it’s ultimately our blockchain partner who aligns the rest of the chain.

This type of go-to-market strategy has resonated with the ‘last mile’ of engagement. When we meet our retail partners, we’re able to present a team solution to an industry problem, rather than an individual one,” he concluded.


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Darryn Pollock

I am an award-winning journalist that has covered a variety of topics from finance to economics, technology, and even sport. With the emergence of Blockchain technology ... Read More