IBM

Feeding a growing planet will require a great amount of food. Doing it safely and sustainably will require an even vaster amount of data to overcome our uncertainty about who is producing our food, as well as the conditions in the farming and fishing communities that supply our most basic needs.

The world population is expected to reach nearly 11 billion people by the end of the century, up from about 7.7 billion today. To keep up with all that population growth, food production and distribution systems must become significantly more productive even as they become more sustainable. Its the only way to feed the world without harming the earth, making people sick or wasting precious nutrients.

That requires lots of informationdata about the growing conditions that make food healthy and safe to eat, as well data about what happens to all the food along the way. For example, spoilage and waste reduces the global food supply by more than a third, according to the USDA. Each stop in a food items supply chainfrom farm to processor to distributoris an opportunity for it to go bad, whether from exposure to the elements or bacteria or simply because the journey takes too long. When it comes to the intricacies of our food supply, we still have vast gaps in our knowledge.

More and better data can help us fill those gaps. But the truly valuable insights and efficiencies come only when all links in the food chainfrom farm to tableare connected. How, for example, are farmersto know if their apples reached consumers in better or worse shape than last years harvest, given that their customers may be thousands of miles away? And if the apples were bad, whos to say it is the farmers fault, and not the power outage that caught the distributor by surprise, or the retailer who didnt handle the apples properly?

Data can also provide us an opportunity to understand how farms and fisheries operate, and what practices they follow that respect animal wellness and the ecology of our planet. By making this connection, we can directly contribute to these communities health and well-being and make more thoughtful choices about what we consume.

By creating a single version of the truth that all participants in a supply chain can share in a permissioned way, we can begin to answer such questionsand many others. Thats the value of blockchain, a distributed ledger creating a continually updated and indelible data record that tracks every step and transaction in even the lengthiest global supply chains. Blockchain can help us create that single version of the truth, and in so doing can help us improve, expand and secure our food supply in the decades to come.

To get food data thats actually useful, we need to connect all the links in the food chain, a goal increasingly within reach thanks to distributed ledger technology. With blockchain, cross-industry collaborationeven between competitorsbecomes dramatically simpler. Members of these networks can designate who sees what information, and why, allowing them to strike a balance between transparency and trade secrets. Many companies are even using this technology to provide key data to consumers, using the provenance record to foster trust and tell a story about their product.

IBM

Take the example of Terra Delyssa, one of the Mediterraneans leading olive oil producers. The company recently began using IBM Food Trust, a blockchain network, to establish traceability for its Terra Delyssa extra virgin olive oil.

Using Food Trust, Terra Delyssa was able to create two applicationsone for its enterprise partners to track in-depth information and audits, and the other for consumers who simply want to know where the oil came from and how it was produced. Consumers can have greater trust in the product, while Terra Delyssas distributor and retail partners can tap vast swaths of new data about the product and its sourcing, to improve their purchasing and distribution efficiency.

With Food Trusts network at 200 participants and growing, Terra Delyssa is hardly alone in looking to blockchain to solve problems related to data, trust and supply chain integrity.

Through careful collaboration via blockchain, even the most complex supply chains can become more transparent and efficient.

Consider coffee.Most coffee is grown in Latin American or Africa on smallholder farms that are technologically unsophisticated (one study estimated the average size of a coffee farm at only 7.5 hectares, or about 18 acres). Many of the best beans cannot be machine harvested. And members of the supply chain use a patchwork system of technology and notebook systems to track their operations. Coffee quality falls in a vast range, from a lukewarm cup of Joe to premium beans that can retail for hundreds of dollars per pound.

The coffee market, in short, was the perfect candidate for blockchain technology. In field tests in Rwanda and Colombia, a new organization called Farmer Connect established the traceability of beans that were entered into the blockchain ledger, and then used the blockchain to detail each shipments journey.

But putting this idea into practice required uniting players large and small to begin collaborating on a shared system. Despite the logistical hurdles, Farmer Connects vision is already working. Industry leaders like the Colombian Coffee Growers Federation, the J.M. Smucker Company and Sucafina have all joined Farmer Connect and have begun using blockchain technology to share pertinent industry data up and down the supply chain. Through this new collaboration, Farmer Connect will finally make it possible for coffee industry players large and small to collaborate using one shared, trusted set of data.

In earlier, simpler times, people generally knew who was producing their food, milling their grain, making their cheese or cobbling their shoes. But globalization and international supply chains introduced anonymity and uncertainty to the process.

Reversing that trend is the virtue of blockchain. Even at a global scale, the technology has re-introduced the values of trust, traceability and accountability to our communities of commerce.

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Blockchain Can Help Safely Feed The World - Forbes