Fair prices for sustainability in agriculture and food. Requirements and design options for a data-based transparency system.

Abstract

The incumbent minister of the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture announced at the beginning of his tenure that farmers need more appreciation and that prices should more strongly express the ecological truth. He does not further tolerate an exploitative system that comes at the expense of people, animals, the environment, and the climate, and pleads for more appreciation and value creation for farmers. One approach to address this issue is the provision of authenticated, traceable, and irreversible data about the food origin and production process. This paper presents the methods, experiences and results of a project that examined in cooperation with relevant stakeholders the technical possibilities of a data space that provides production and process data to the customer. An integral part of this data space is a blockchain module that ensures the traceability and irreversibility of the data. The paper contributes to research on blockchain application in governmental systems that provide trustful information in a food data space and it provides insights in to the concerns of different stakeholders as well as their role in the overall governance of a blockchain supported data space.