Traceable, trustworthy and privacy preserving agri-food supply chains

The globally complex trade practices have given rise to supply chain digitization for data storage and traceability of agricultural produce. However, these traceability systems suffer from issues such as scattering of information across multiple silos and susceptibility to erroneous or modified data which could lead to compromised food safety through fraud or counterfeiting. Ensuring the credibility of information about a product is another challenge as the available data may not be the true representation of the physical events in a product's lifecycle. Traceability and transparency come at the expense of sharing business-sensitive data. Exposure of product related data makes it difficult to protect trade secrets such as shipments, pricing and trade frequency while simultaneously ensuring the provenance/traceability to the consumers. In this paper, we highlight the need for agri-food supply chain traceability and present a generic framework for the traceability model with blockchain as a key component. The framework includes building blocks from data, storage, application and blockchain layers. Finally, we share our work in applying blockchain technology for supply chain management - with a focus on fresh produce as an example use-case. We also highlight the challenges and future opportunities in adopting blockchain for supply chain resilience.