A Blockchain Framework for Containerized Food Supply Chains

Global agricultural trade flows demonstrated a three-fold growth during the past decade particularly in emerging economies. At the same time, global food scandals in conjunction with the spillover effects in economy and society highlight the unreliability of existing food tracking systems and the inefficiency in monitoring food quality and fraud incidents across global food supply chains (SCs). Blockchain technology (BCT), which has already been successfully applied on the financial industry to validate critical transactions, seems to be a promising option. This research investigates a two-stage containerized food SC by implementing a demonstrator application at the Hyperledger Fabric framework. The study findings indicates that on one hand BCT has entered its maturity phase while on the other hand its adoption in food SC operations could add significant value by authenticating critical parameters and providing enhanced traceability. At the same time, BCT enabled by other digital technologies could allow for the optimization of global food SCs. Thus, BCT constitutes a promising digital technology that provides the capability to food SC stakeholders to securely share information, enhance process control and traceability and prevent potential risks.