Blockchain Adoption to Secure the Food Industry: Opportunities and Challenges

Sudeep Tanwar, Akshay Parmar, Aparna Kumari, Nilesh Kumar Jadav, Wei-Chiang Hong and Ravi Sharma
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Sudeep Tanwar: Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Institute of Technology, Nirma University, Ahmedabad 382481, Gujarat, India
Akshay Parmar: Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Institute of Technology, Nirma University, Ahmedabad 382481, Gujarat, India
Aparna Kumari: Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Institute of Technology, Nirma University, Ahmedabad 382481, Gujarat, India
Nilesh Kumar Jadav: Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Institute of Technology, Nirma University, Ahmedabad 382481, Gujarat, India
Wei-Chiang Hong: Department of Information Management, Asia Eastern University of Science and Technology, New Taipei 22064, Taiwan
Ravi Sharma: Centre for Inter-Disciplinary Research and Innovation, University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, P.O. Bidholi Via-Prem Nagar, Dehradun 248007, Uttarakhand, India

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 12, 1-25

Abstract: With the growth in food products’ usage, ensuring their quality and safety has become progressively difficult. Specifically, food traceability turns out to be a very critical task for retailers, sellers, consumers, surveillance authorities, and other stakeholders in the food supply chain system. There are requirements for food authenticity verification (correct declaration of cultivation, origin, and variety), quality checks (e.g., justification for higher prices), and preventing food products from fraudsters in the food industry. The ubiquitous and promising technology of blockchain ensures the traceability of food trade networks with high potential and handles the aforementioned issues. Blockchain makes the food industry more transparent at all levels by storing data immutably and enabling quick tracking across the stages of the food supply chain. Hence, commodities, stakeholders, and semi-finished food items can be recognized significantly faster. Motivated by these facts, in this paper, we present an in-depth survey of state-of-the-art approaches to the food industry’s security, food traceability, and food supply chain management. Further, we propose a blockchain-based secure and decentralized food industry architecture to alleviate security and privacy aspects and present a comprehensive solution taxonomy for a blockchain-based food industry. Then, a comparative analysis of existing approaches with respect to various parameters, i.e., scalability, latency, and food quality, is presented, which facilitates the end-user in selecting approaches based on the merits over other approaches. Finally, we provide insights into the open issues and research challenges with concluding remarks.

Keywords: blockchain; food industry; food supply chain; traceability; food data security (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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