Stakeholders throughout the food industry, including research groups and standard organizations, are evaluating the way to best incorporate distributed ledger technologies into the food supply chain. This interest in blockchain stems from a broader effort to achieve greater transaction efficiency and interoperability between supply chain nodes, while also decreasing the risk of data corruption as goods change hands. The potential of blockchain-based food exchange to reinforce inter-organization communication and provide chain transparency continues to drive development of pilot programs. New research is being conducted to shed light on the advantages and maturity of these programs.
According to research, through 2022, 80% of supply chain blockchain initiatives will remain at a proof-of-concept (POC) or pilot stage. One of the main reasons for this development is that early blockchain pilots for supply chain pursued technology-oriented models that have been successful in other sectors, such as banking and insurance. But, successful blockchain use cases for supply chain will require a special approach.
Modern supply chains are very complex and need digital connectivity and agility across participants. Many organizations believed that blockchain could help navigate this complexity and pushed to make robust use cases for the availability chain. However, most of those use cases were inspired by pilots from the banking and insurance sector and didn’t work well during a supply chain environment.