Assembling Blockchain and IoT for Smart Food-Supply Chain

Abstract

Globalization and extreme competition in the market have made the food supply chain more complex than before.  To address the complexities in the food supply chain, blockchain has become more evident than the traditional ways. Use of blockchain technologies can ensure the efficiency, transparency and reliability of the food supply chain starting from the farms to forks. This study focuses on the applicability of blockchain systems to the agriculture field and provides comparative analysis among the existing methodologies that are dedicated to uplift the security, effectiveness and reliability of blockchain based food supply chains. This research has also proposed a novel model that couples blockchain and IoT based sensor modules, which can be applicable in real-life scenarios. The proposed method essentially follows a multi-layer architecture where each layer is presented by means of a blockchain technology. Each layer is fed by the ambient conditions which may impact better quality of crops. The IoT module will ensure better farming as well as the blockchain system will ensure the quality of the end product. If the packaged food degrades in quality, the reason behind the degradation can be located by the model presented in this paper. The presented framework may reach promising efficiency in practical life but the framework implementation cost may create a burden for the investors.