FARM-SOURCED CRYPTO-CULINARY

Blockchain technology has many uses, including stopping listeriosis outbreaks.

ACCORDING TO A REPORT BY

Pricewaterhousecoopers, food fraud costs the global food industry around $40 billion every year. We’re talking about the horsemeat scandals, rat meat sold as mutton, methanol in whisky, salmonella in peanut butter, and recent listeriosis outbreaks of varying degrees in South Africa, Australia and Europe.

The World Health Organization estimates that around 1 in 10 people becomes ill every single year from eating contaminated food, but the main issue is that when there is a food scandal, it can take weeks, if not months, to solve the bigger foodsystem jigsaw puzzle and isolate the issue. And not destroying or recalling problem products in a timely fashion can have serious consequences.

This is a socio-economic issue that extends beyond the bottom line, which is why it’s time to re-examine the supply chain as a whole. Food supply chains are becoming increasingly intricate. From farm to fork, we expect that food producers should be able to provide us with honest, straightforward answers to questions we have around ethics and transparency. The reality is that there is still work to be done to achieve this vision. Blockchain technology can help. MORE THAN BITCOIN… While the most common association with blockchain technology so far has been cryptocurrency – be it Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dash, Monero or countless others – the secure nature of this relatively new tech has led to exciting uses, from tracking blood diamonds to tracing the origins of your avocados and olive oil.

The main technology underlying all of this is a distributed ledger, or blockchain. Transactions are recorded in blocks that are linked and secured. These records are verified and stored across a network, making the ledger difficult to tamper with.

‘ The really interesting part is that blockchain, this incredible combination of capabilities in computing, connectivity and cryptography, has applications not only in the financial world, but in any transactional environment,’ explains Dr Adriana Marais, head of innovation at SAP. ‘ The question of how to verify, secure and manage identity and [data] is more pertinent today than ever before.’

Companies and global research centres are in the process of developing portable technologies – DNA barcodes, if you will, that will allow consumers to check the content of food labels. Just imagine being able to test your grocery haul at home, or in the shops, to see if that palm-oil product was fair trade and not detrimental to the planet or the people producing it. Wouldn’t you like to know if that punnet of glistening red strawberries is truly organic and grown without pesticides?

According to IBOL (the International Barcode of Life Project – the project to build a barcoded reference library of DNA for every living thing), by about 2167, we will be able to identify single specimens of every organism on the planet, as well as routinely spot species among millions of organisms. They also say we will do all of this without sending samples to a lab.

In sub- Saharan Africa, Global Markets Exchange Group International LLP can create a blockchain-based platform for African commodity markets to help connect farmers with buyers and brokers. Zimbabwe has already signed a memorandum of understanding with the group for a fully integrated Financial and Commodities Ecosystem (Fincomeco) to provide enablement solutions and capacity building for the country’s agricultural sector. Early impact estimates peg the GDP to grow by 1,5 times between 2018 and 2022, creating about 630 000 (combined direct and indirect) jobs.

Zimbabwean farmers will benefit from better crop prices, and see reductions in loan-repayment rates because the proposed blockchain system is transparent. This should give smaller farmers far better insight into interest rates and commodities trading and, ultimately, democratise the sector’s financial system by maximising its earning potential. TRUST IN FOOD Labelling a product as organic, crueltyfree, or sustainable is a very popular marketing tactic, which is why we need to start asking ourselves what these labels really mean. Who determines if something is organic? How do they do it? Can we trust it? And, if a deal is too good to be true, could it mean that your bottle of extra virgin olive oil isn’t Italian in origin, but French? And does it matter?

Today’s more ethically conscious consumer demands answers, insists on transparency and, most of all, wants to ensure a product marked ‘Organic’ or ‘Free range’ lives up to its label. This is more than a trust issue: It has massive socio-economic repercussions.

‘Our food system lacks transparency and trust,’ explains IBM’S Nigel Gopie

in a company blog post: ‘Current processes consequently do not provide the complete end-to-end foodsupply-chain transparency and assurances that many consumers demand. Mislabelled food poses foodsafety concerns and costs consumers extra. For instance, mislabelled fish is more likely to contain toxins, increased levels of antibiotics, and environmental chemicals such as mercury.’

Millions of us are duped daily into buying pricier products that do not meet organic standards. Which is why IBM’S Food Trust is so important. Powered by the IBM Blockchain Platform, the Food Trust is a collaborative web of growers, processors, wholesalers, distributors, manufacturers, retailers and others, enhancing visibility and accountability in each step of food supply. It directly connects participants via a permissioned, permanent and shared record of food-origin details, processing data, shipping details and much more. Blockchain makes it easier to detect fraudulent companies by providing a detailed history of food items.

One interesting example is with China’s second-largest current e-commerce platform, Jd.com. It’s working closely with a beef manufacturer in Mongolia, using blockchain to track the production and delivery of frozen beef. This means that people living in Shanghai, Beijing and other major cities in China can easily find out more about their meat – from when the cow was born to what it was eating – before it’s served up on their dinner tables.

And in the US, Walmart is turning to blockchain as a food-safety solution because when there is a food scare, there is not only a need for transparency (telling the consumer what is going on), but also efficiency (how soon you get the guilty product off-shelf) and speed. Is the product in question really the culprit?

IN BLOCKCHAIN WE TRUST

Bridget van Kralingen, IBM’S New York-based senior VP for global industries,

platforms and blockchain, told Popular Mechanics this is essentially about validating, verifying, recalling and showing where food really comes from.

‘It’s explicitly for food provenance and origin. It’s asking: is that tin of baby formula actually made from the good stuff that I expect it to be made from? It’s huge in terms of merging blockchain with the physical supply chain,’ adds Van Kralingen.

In 2008, a scandal broke when it was discovered that a popular brand of baby formula in China was tainted with the industrial chemical melamine. The scandal involved other food materials (but mainly dietary supplements) and it’s estimated that there were more than 300 000 victims, 54 000 of which were babies who had to be hospitalised. Today, Chinese shoppers are sceptical of the quality of locally produced food, and that is why IBM’S Asian foodsafety alliance is so important.

‘As a business model, and as an enterprise mindset, it is good for everyone to have provenance. In the IBM Food Trust, the groups involved realised none of them (as individual companies) could solve these global food issues individually – they had to solve it collectively.’

People want others to be treated fairly. And this is what blockchain promises for future food economies. It’s about helping people make trustworthy food choices for themselves and their families, and their communities as a whole.

‘ This is not just a proof of concept, and not a one-off meal. Dozens of items are now on the blockchain, representing hundreds of thousands of transactions. There’s no hype; it’s real,’ says Gopie.