According to the Worldometer, there are 7.8 billion people in the world right now, and that number is going up. The World Bank thinks that this number will keep going up until it reaches 9.7 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100.

With a population that is growing so quickly, it is clear that people will need a lot more food. To meet the food needs of the world’s population, the agriculture industry is using artificial intelligence (AI) and other techniques and technologies for food automation to come up with new ways to make food.

Since the agriculture industry is so big, it has to deal with a lot of problems that threaten its long-term health. Every problem should be solved, from labor work to a competitive market, or else the ecosystem could fall apart.

A reliable Blockchain Development Company can help the agricultural and food industry deal with and manage risks that can be predicted and keep prices low throughout the ecosystem. Here are some facts about how blockchain is used in agriculture and what the future holds for it.

Statistics show that the global market value of blockchain in the food and agriculture market, which was about 32.2 million U.S. dollars in 2017, will grow to about 1.4 billion U.S. dollars by 2028.

In its report “Blockchain in Agriculture and Food Supply Chain Global Market Report 2021: COVID-19 Growth and Change,” released by Reportlinker.com, it says that the global blockchain in agriculture and food supply chain market is expected to grow from $128.87 million in 2020 to $189.48 million in 2021, at a compound annual growth rate of 47%.

The same report also says that the market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 47.1% to $886.18 million by 2025.

As we all know, every coin has two sides, and every topic or product also has two sides. The way that the agriculture industry’s problems are getting worse and making it impossible to care for sustainability. In the same way, using blockchain in agriculture can change this for the better. Let’s look at how blockchain has helped the agriculture business in the next section. But let’s start with the question: what is Blockchain agriculture?

What is Blockchain Agriculture?

In simple terms, blockchain agriculture is the use of blockchain in agriculture to improve the way things work and make more money. In the agricultural sector, blockchain can be used to make businesses more sustainable and cut down on waste. It can also help consumers make better decisions about what to buy and make future transactions smoother by getting rid of fraud.

Smart Agriculture is a new term that is being used in the business world. Smart agriculture uses natural resources and has less of an effect on the environment by using ICTs (information and communication technologies), blockchain, and other modern ways to collect and analyze data.

How is Blockchain Used in Farming?

Traditional frameworks with core control are often vulnerable to data corruption because the people in charge of the framework can be biased and try to get certain results by putting in the wrong data. Cyberattacks happen often on these kinds of platforms. Entrepreneurs are moving to blockchain and learning how it works to make transactions safer and easier.

Let’s look at how blockchain can be used in farming:

Farm Inventory Management

In reality, many farming businesses aren’t ready to use cutting-edge technology to keep track of their stock. In fact, this is causing the food and resources to go to waste. Farmers are also the ones who pay for the losses. So, this is a huge problem for the farmers, who don’t have the tools they need to deal with it.

Using blockchain technology here could change things for the better. In inventory management, blockchain can help farmers by keeping track of the temperature of the storage area and telling you when food will go bad. In this way, you can do the right thing.

Improving the Agricultural Supply Chain Efficiency

Another amazing way that blockchain technology is used in farming is to make the whole industry more productive. The productivity of this industry isn’t enough because it doesn’t use automation and new ideas. Most of the time, small and medium-sized farmers don’t have access to expensive technologies that would improve the quality of their crops.

The use of blockchain in the supply chain in the future could be very helpful here. Using a blockchain ledger system, it can quickly take care of all the parts, reduce the costs of the farming cycles, and improve the overall efficiency of the yield. Here are some of the ways that blockchain can help the agriculture supply chain.

Getting Farm Management Software Up-to-Date

Another way that blockchain helps farmers is by making farm management software more up-to-date. The software for managing farms will soon be used by most farmers. But despite that, this product works with the typical client-server model. So, they can’t yet make as much money as they could if they used blockchain.

So, in this case, using blockchain can help take the FMS to the next level. Even more, the security of blockchain will give this software the safety they need. The farmers no longer have to worry about cyber hacks.

IoT Security

IoT devices are needed in the agriculture industry to keep track of the crops. These devices can also make a big difference in how safe and secure their equipment is. Using the machines, they can keep track of the weather and the state of the land, and they can also change it. In the same way, some gadgets can even tell when a normal disaster is about to happen. Some devices can also tell when natural disasters will happen.

But the problem is that these devices are open to cyberattacks because the cloud services they use to store data are often open to them. With its strong security protocol, Blockchain can help with this. The benefits of blockchain in farming will protect these IoT devices and give them a better way to connect to each other.

Setting Fair Prices

It is true that many farms don’t get a fair price for their goods. Even though crops have good yields, many wholesalers don’t give them the price they deserve.

Using blockchain, things can change. Farmers can sell their goods to fair buyers through the blockchain-based marketplace, and they can reach even more buyers than they could before. This will help them negotiate the price in a more fair and reasonable way. In this way, the farmers can finally get what they deserve.

Micro Loans

The alternative to microloans is another great way that blockchain can be used in agriculture. Small and medium-sized farms sometimes need loans to keep up and run their business. Still, banks’ loan policies are very interesting. So, the organizations are in a bad spot because the cost of interest could force them to take out more loans.

So, using blockchain technology can put an end to the problem for good. Enterprise Blockchain Consulting can help farmers get microloans from lenders all over the world through the network. With a small amount of loan money, they can handle small interest costs, which helps them keep the business going for a long time.

With global food systems like sea food, of which almost 40% is traded internationally, it’s important to make sure information is clear and transparent through technologies like blockchain so that people can make good decisions and work together in a way that builds trust. To explain the solution, we will talk about the role of blockchain in future agriculture and food security.

How Blockchain Technology Affects Farming and Food Safety?

Gathering Information

Blockchain technology can be used to save information about the type of seed, track how crops grow, and keep track of where a crop goes after it leaves the farm.

For example, in Canada, people who work in the food system use information from an online blockchain marketplace called Grain Discovery to develop and market crops that are competitive around the world.

The data could also improve supply chain transparency by making records that can’t be changed from creation to consumption. This kind of information could work with data transfer at each step of the supply network. Also, blockchains can stop illegal and unethical production and circulation, which hurts sustainability and food security, if they are used with the right permissions.

Tracking Pathways

At the moment, there isn’t much evidence to back up the claim that blockchain and big data innovations are making food more secure around the world. Even though the average farm is expected to produce 4.1 million data points by 2050, up from 190,000 data points in 2014, there haven’t been many improvements in food security around the world.

Even so, companies are doing what they can to make the process clear, because people want to know where their food comes from. The numbers below show the percentage of people who want to know more about food.

IBM and Walmart, for example, have worked together to track food from the farm to the table. Makers and processors along the inventory network need to add data to IBM’s blockchain so that food can be tracked and consumers can see the whole process.

Data and the Future of Food

Before blockchain and other data innovations can help with food security, there are a number of problems that need to be solved.

Blockchains should be run without a central point of control so that small farmers and people in rural areas can use them. This will help build sustainable and fair food systems and give buyers the information they need to make smart decisions.

As blockchains put more responsibility on end users, problems like the lack of digital skills among the world’s poor and a lack of infrastructure may hurt true decentralization. Also, they should be tied into larger plans to improve food security. This will make them more sensitive to social and environmental values, which is important for dealing with food insecurity among different groups.

The undiscovered ability to use big data through a transparent and decentralised food distribution framework could help make food production more sustainable and give food producers more responsibility.

Key Takeaways

Blockchain agriculture and the food supply chain can change the way things have always been done. More so, now that we know how blockchain can be used to improve agriculture, the market for farmers is full of possibilities, with a fair share of market value and efficient production made possible by technology.

Blockchain has limited ways to manage data, and sometimes companies that offer blockchain development services would do better to build a full database instead of using a distributed ledger. But people are getting more and more excited about blockchain technology every day.