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Blockchain in agriculture supply chains to top $430m

Written by: Supply Chain Online
Published on: 5 Oct 2018

BLOCKCHAIN NEWS

Blockchain in agriculture supply chains to top $430m

Blockchain is set to bring further investment to supply chains surrounding food production and agriculture, as the next few years are set to bring an additional $430m to the sector.

A report that emerged this week from Reportlinker suggests that the market forecast is strong and will be primarily led by the technological advances that blockchain can enable.

The compound annual rate of growth is expected to hit almost 50% a year for the next five years, which will lead to the sector growing by $60m more between now and 2023.

A summary of the report that accompanied the release said that “blockchain technology is revolutionizing the food and agriculture sectors”, particularly when it comes to “enhancing the decision-making capabilities of organizations”.

With large supply chains always historically considered to have suffered from inefficiencies due to their size, blockchain is of growing interest to a sector that sees so much of its product wasted due to its time-sensitive nature of production and shelf life.

From milk to orange juice and almonds, many of the major world food suppliers and growers have been experimenting with blockchain to help track the movement of their goods around the world, and to spot ways of improving the chain without resorting to trial and error in an imprecise manner.

The report also indicates that it believes that blockchain can reduce levels of food fraud, which it says costs the worldwide sector a staggering $49bn per year, when products go missing without trace off the supply chain, with no current way of being able to find out what happened to it.

Blockchain has also been looked at in many other industries with the aim of improving the supply chain across the board, as the telecoms industry speculated an additional $1bn of savings could be created over the next five years from the technology.