BlockApps
Delivering Enhanced Traceability through Blockchain

Agribusinesses and their partners are seeking comprehensive end-to-end traceability to better understand the origin and journey of products as they move through the supply chain. From the commercial side, granular traceability helps agribusinesses optimize the farm-to-store journey of products, minimize food waste, and take prompt action in case of recalls. From the consumer end, this means better reliability in terms of product quality and safety. Blockchain technology delivers the promise of precise traceability and transparency, bringing a host of benefits to farmers, agribusinesses, and end consumers, by recording information on an unalterable, distributed ledger at every step in the food supply chain.

Today, leading-edge firm BlockApps makes this possible with its one-of-a-kind platform. “With our blockchain-based end-to-end traceability platform, TraceHarvest, we have designed a collaborative solution to connect all aspects of the agribusiness value chain, starting from the seed source,” says Victor Wong, Founder and Chief Product Officer of BlockApps.

Developed in collaboration with Bayer Crop Science, one of the world’s leading agtech innovators, TraceHarvest provides a comprehensive picture of product stewardship from seed to table. The advantages that TraceHarvest brings for agribusinesses with its unprecedented transparency and traceability are threefold. The network relieves the pain points of expensive, high-friction manual tracking processes that are employed for monitoring high-value goods. TraceHarvest concurrently creates a scalable, extensible, and verifiable tracking process that can be deployed cost-effectively, even for commodity products. And most prominently, it drives digital transformation throughout the food supply and value chain, driving operational efficiency and facilitating greater compliance.

TraceHarvest is built from the ground up to incentivize every player in the agribusiness value chain. For seed and input providers, it is a single source of truth that tracks seed provenance to reveal its utilization further down the supply chain. Distribution dealers use real-time inventory, transaction, and logistics data from TraceHarvest to better manage and distribute a large range of products at a low cost. Meanwhile, growers utilize the information from TraceHarvest to maximize the value of their products. For example, there are specific techniques for growing specialty products. TraceHarvest allows growers to leverage such expansive information in real time. It also provides food processors with several features, including crop provenance, robust compliance, and better inventory and revenue forecasting capabilities.

To leverage such a rewarding network, agribusinesses do not have to ‘reinvent the wheel’ and embrace a new data system. TraceHarvest seamlessly integrates with the ERP, precision agriculture, or any other software systems of all supply chain participants, creating a single and secure platform that connects farmers, manufacturers, distributors, and processors. Governed by private blockchains and role-based access controls (RBAC), the platform enables participants to selectively share and review data on a permissioned basis with the entire value chain, ensuring their data sovereignty. TraceHarvest is also highly scalable, allowing quick and easy addition of new users and onboarding of partners to the network.

The Future of Agriculture, Today

Such vast competencies enable TraceHarvest to unlock a diverse range of impactful business use cases. For instance, the critical insights it offers drive and reward sustainable practices throughout the food supply chain. With its extensive network, TraceHarvest empowers network members to collaborate with downstream food producers and verify claims on their sustainability practices.

With our blockchain-based end-to-end traceability platform, TraceHarvest, we have designed a collaborative solution to connect all aspects of the agribusiness value chain, starting from the seed source

Another critical application centers around food safety. The FDA Food Safety and Modernization Act (FSMA) is transforming the nation’s food safety system by shifting the focus from responding to foodborne illness to preventing it. The FSMA recognizes that the safety of the food supply is a shared responsibility of the entire agribusiness value chain. However, the current manual processes in the domain fail to deliver the data that the value chain participants need, putting them at risk of compliance violations. The TraceHarvest Network’s shared infrastructure, with a granular level of visibility and transparency, can rescue agribusinesses on this front.

These instances amply demonstrate how blockchain technology is revolutionizing the world of agriculture today, and BlockApps’s TraceHarvest platform intends to be at the helm by enabling novel products, services, and business models centered around food quality, sustainability, and transparency.