Blockchain Applications in Agribusiness: A Systematic Review

Geneci Da Silva Ribeiro Rocha,Letícia De Oliveira,Edson Talamini

doi:10.3390/fi13040095

Geneci Da Silva Ribeiro Rocha, Letícia De Oliveira + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/fi13040095

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Journal: Future internet	Publication Date: Apr 8, 2021
Citations: 34	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul

Abstract

Blockchain is a technology that can be applied in different sectors to solve various problems. As a complex system, agribusiness presents many possibilities to take advantage of blockchain technology. The main goal of this paper is to identify the purposes for which blockchain has been applied in the agribusiness sector, for which a PRISMA-based systematic review was carried out. The scientific literature corpus was accessed and selected from Elsevier’s Scopus and ISI of Knowledge’s Web of Science (WoS) platforms, using the PRISMA protocol procedures. Seventy-one articles were selected for analysis. Blockchain application in agribusiness is a novel topic, with the first publication dating from 2016. The technological development prevails more than blockchain applications since it has been addressed mainly in the Computer Sciences and Engineering. Blockchain applications for agribusiness management of financial, energy, logistical, environmental, agricultural, livestock, and industrial purposes have been reported in the literature. The findings suggest that blockchain brings many benefits when used in agribusiness supply chains. We concluded that the research on blockchain applications in agribusiness is only at an early stage, as many prototypes are being developed and tested in the laboratory. In the near future, blockchain will be increasingly applied across all economic sectors, including agribusiness, promoting greater reliability and agility in information with a reduced cost. Several gaps for future studies were observed, with significant value for science, industry, and society.

Highlights

Agribusiness is a sector of paramount importance for a country; its potential is the result of a set of several factors, especially investments in technology and research, which can increase productivity
In the search for results regarding the purposes for which blockchain has been applied in the agribusiness supply chains, bibliometric analyses and discussions based on a systematic review of the literature were used to find evidence from studies
We found that an article from 2016 was the earliest publication in Web of Science (WoS), when no publication about blockchain in agribusiness was retrieved in the Scopus database

Summary

Introduction

Agribusiness is a sector of paramount importance for a country; its potential is the result of a set of several factors, especially investments in technology and research, which can increase productivity. The agribusiness aggregate is composed of several inputs or product supply chains operating in different natural ecosystems. The supply chains are embedded in an institutional environment formed by financial, R&D, and technical assistance organizations and institutions with a strong influence on their performance [1]. Chains involve a set of activities that are gradually structured from the production to manufacturing and marketing of a product or service. A supply chain is understood to be the operations involving everything from the manufacturing of inputs, production on the farm, transformation process (industrialization), distribution, and trading to reach the end consumer [2]. The agribusiness supply chains of a country may have great prominence all over the world since they are complex, diversified, and dependent on the organization of each link in the productive system and the relation between them.

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