A Blockchain-Based Wide-Area Agricultural Machinery Resource Scheduling System

Abstract

<b>Highlights</b> <list list-type=bullet><list-item> The proposed system aims to reduce the high cost of wide-area agricultural production caused by the uneven distribution of agricultural machinery resources in different regions. </list-item><list-item> The proposed system solves the current problem that differences in business models in different regions make it hard to establish a centralized dispatching platform. It can also improve the utilization rate of agricultural machinery and solve the trust problem between the participants. </list-item><list-item> We implement our system on Hyperledger Fabric that meets the needs of all farmers in a wide area for agricultural machinery resources. </list-item></list> <b>Abstract.</b> At present, there are mainly two forms of agricultural machinery scheduling in China, intra-region scheduling and wide-area scheduling. The former can only schedule agricultural machinery within a region, while the latter can schedule agricultural machinery among multiple regions in the global scope to solve the problem of uneven regional distribution of agricultural machinery resources. However, the different business models in different regions make it hard to establish a centralized scheduling platform. The agricultural machinery resources of individual farmers cannot be fully utilized, and the parties involved in the scheduling lack trust. To address these issues, this article proposes a blockchain-based wide-area agricultural machinery resource scheduling system and agricultural machinery scheduling optimization model. In this article, a smart contract based on hybrid algorithm is deployed on the blockchain. The information of agricultural machinery resources is stored in the interplanetary file system (IPFS), and the returned addresses and scheduling matching results are stored on the blockchain. Then, the proposed system implements an authenticated access mechanism, and only authorized users can join the system. In addition, the data on the blockchain cannot be altered, which ensures the security of the data. Finally, the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain is used as the experimental platform to conduct performance experiments in two towns in China. The results indicate that the proposed method can reduce the cost of wide-area agricultural production and improve the utilization rate of agricultural machinery resources. This article also puts forward suggestions on the quantity of agricultural machinery to be purchased.