Abstract
Increasingly, blockchain technology is attracting significant attentions in various agricultural applications. These applications could satisfy the diverse needs in the ecosystem of agricultural products, e.g., increasing transparency of food safety and IoT based food quality control, provenance traceability, improvement of contract exchanges, and transactions efficiency. As multiple untrusted parties, including small-scale farmers, food processors, logistic companies, distributors and retailers, are involved into the complex farm-to-fork pipeline, it becomes vital to achieve optimal trade-off between efficiency and integrity of the agricultural management systems as required in contexts. In this paper, we provide a survey to study both techniques and applications of blockchain technology used in the agricultural sector. First, the technical elements, including data structure, cryptographic methods, and consensus mechanisms are explained in detail. Secondly, the existing agricultural blockchain applications are categorized and reviewed to demonstrate the use of the blockchain techniques. In addition, the popular platforms and smart contract are provided to show how practitioners use them to develop these agricultural applications. Thirdly, we identify the key challenges in many prospective agricultural systems, and discuss the efforts and potential solutions to tackle these problems. Further, we conduct an improved food supply chain in the post COVID-19 pandemic economy as an illustration to demonstrate an effective use of blockchain technology.
Highlights
Current agricultural development and reform are calling for new techniques and innovations to create a more transparent and accountable environment in the agriculture sector
VOLUME 8, 2020 in the agricultural sector by an illustration of the technical details of the key components in blockchain technology, (iii) we further identify the key challenges in many novel agricultural applications and discuss alternative solutions, and (iv) we present a post COVID-19 pandemic blockchain based supply chain system to improve the resource allocation when dealing with unexpected event emergency
AN ILLUSTRATION OF ESSENTIAL FOOD SUPPLY IN POST-COVID-19 PANDEMIC we present an illustration to demonstrate a blockchain based food supply chain management system in agricultural applications
Summary
Current agricultural development and reform are calling for new techniques and innovations to create a more transparent and accountable environment in the agriculture sector. Blockchain applications in agriculture enhance diverse aspects in agricultural systems, especially supply chain [3] and Internet of things (IoTs) based systems [4] These applications include food safety [5], food security [6], food quality monitoring and control [7], traceability for waste reduction [8], reliable operational data analysis [9] and efficient contract exchanges and transactions to reduce economic costs [10], supporting small-scale farmers [11]. VOLUME 8, 2020 in the agricultural sector by an illustration of the technical details of the key components in blockchain technology, (iii) we further identify the key challenges in many novel agricultural applications and discuss alternative solutions, and (iv) we present a post COVID-19 pandemic blockchain based supply chain system to improve the resource allocation when dealing with unexpected event emergency.
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