Blockchain Technology in Agriculture

Abstract

The World Economic Forum marked Blockchain technology (BCT) as one of the seven revolutionary technologies of the future. It is a distributed ledger system ensuring transparency, security, immutability, interoperability, and provenance. This article tries to understand the technological aspects, working mechanism and explore different areas where BCT can be applied in agriculture. Data in BCT is stored in a series of blocks contains the hash value (previous and the current), timestamp, and difficulty details, secured cryptographically with a symmetric or asymmetric digital signature to avoid data tampering and fraud. Traceability (supply chain), using Smart contracts (in Agricultural insurance, Crop finance, Land records) achieved by the BCT and the companies (Carrefour, Trace harvest), states (Telangana, Andhra Pradesh), and countries (Kenya, European Union) practicing are discussed. The Farmer producer company- Sahyadri farms keen implementation of blockchain fetched benefits to farmers amid Covid times. Finally, addressing the barriers in practicing the BCT in India- Technology maturity, energy cost, and education. The massive potential of BCT is yet untapped, to reach up to the farmer level, which will flourish in the coming years.