The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has suggested regulations on organic products to enable blockchain-based supply chain tracking.
The document, which was published on the agency’s webpage, suggests that electronic tracking systems for food supply chains, including those using blockchain, will play an “important role” in the food security process.
“Distributed ledger technology provides verifiable, transparent, secure, and almost instantaneous traceability of items in complex supply chains. It is equally important that the blockchain can safeguard commercially sensitive data and trade secrets, as well as automatically restrict access to important information only to authorized persons”, the officials said.
At the same time, the Ministry recognizes that the use of emerging technologies will require additional time to develop systems:
“An obstacle to the widespread use of electronic systems for tracking is the lack of infrastructure development in agricultural areas, the lack of standards for interoperability between systems and the overall cost of implementation”.
In the document, the departments do not name specific blockchains for integration into the state system for tracking the organic product chains of supply. However, there are links to some of the existing commercial systems, including the Walmart and Nestle platforms.
According to the WEF, blockchain could save $365 billion in valuable funds by 2030 by reducing the loss of foodstuffs in supply chains.
