Enabling SFSCs through digital transparency tools
In last week’s article, we talked about short food supply chains (SFSCs), how they represent an alternative to unsustainable food systems, and respond to several needs and opportunities for all the food supply chain beneficiaries. The Covid-19 pandemic has brought to light the need to develop SFSCs further by adopting innovative solutions to practical problems faced by farmers and consumers. At Anteja, we believe that to drive the SFSCs forward, more effort will be needed in mainly two domains. The first entails strengthening food producers’ trade capacity and marketing strategy to build closer relationships with their customers. Simultaneously, the second involves improving food supply chains’ transparency by adopting new digital technologies.
Digital transparency tools
New digital technologies are considered a promising development for value chain transparency. They enable more detailed, objective, and complete information collection and create a secure, transparent, and democratic way of info sharing. Facilitated communications, operations, and transactions across the food system can result in better informed and engaged consumers and more transparent value chains.
Digital technologies in the food system vary from simple off-line farmer digital videos to complex systems, such as distributed ledger technologies for supply chain traceability. Socio-economic and environmental information can be collected through digital devices (i.e., mobile phones, satellites, drones, and sensors). To make sense of data collected, data analysis innovations such as artificial intelligence and machine learning can be applied. For sharing data, new technologies, such as blockchain or mobile platforms, can ensure the fidelity of shared information.
Get Martina Vilhar’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Blockchain represents an emerging technology in agriculture, which can provide an approach for better monitoring agri-foods from farm to fork and a tool to more closely connect the participants of the food supply chain and regulators. The use of blockchain in the SFSCs is still at an early stage. However, there are many successful apps built around it. These apps work as intermediated platforms, facilitating transparency in global value chains (GVCs).
Anteja’s phy2app links farmers directly with their consumers by offering product information (origin, farm location, growing practices, certification, environmental and socio-economic data) and market data (consumer information). Increased information transparency enables Agri supply chain actors to strengthen their negotiation power and gain more market visibility. In the global value chain context, such apps reduce intermediaries’ role between sellers and buyers, facilitating transparent and efficient value chains.
J. Xu, S. Guo, D. Xie, Y. Yan (2020): Blockchain, a new safeguard for agrifoods
