The food supply chain is broken, and the world leaders aim to solve it with Blockchain.
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Could your next meal 🍜 be delivered on the chain ⛓?
The food Supply chain is complicated and vulnerable to Acts of God, especially non-FMCG, perishable goods. A very simple Food Chain schematic would focus on Producer, Distributor, and Consumer — but like everything 21st Century, Food Supply Chains are incredibly complex, and our current food supply chains are broken. Today we are going to talk about the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) way to streamline a chain using the Blockchain Toolkit.
Earlier, this year, a ton of distributors and farms were heavily hit by the pandemic and the stay-at-home orders. And it is essential that these producers and distributors stay open so that the famine doesn’t occur.
“One of our beef plants feeds 22 million people per day, so it’s vital that these plants stay open”
— Dave MacLennan, CEO of Cargill Inc.
Most food supply chain looks pretty simple. It starts off with a Supplier delivering Raw Materials to the Manufacturer, who supplies the goods to Distribution centers, from where it is sold to customers via retailers.
But these supply chains are not very accountable. About 18% of the produce from India is wasted, which might not seem like a lot, but consider that India exports only 1–2%. India lost a close to 5 Million USD purely due to wasted produce. There is a hierarchical approach to minimizing food waste.
While wastage is one problem, the other is efficiency or lack thereof. Food Industry largely still relies on paper for accounting. There have been attempts to digitalize, but countries with low internet penetration or populations that struggle with the User Interface are left behind. A ton of organizations uses a centralized approach to something that is inherently decentralized in the sense that there are no central bodies governing a certain chain of supply. Sure, you have…
