Several agricultural industry players showed growing interest in testing the benefits of Blockchain technology in supply chain tracking and data reporting. In a report released by The Australian Financial Review, CBH Group announced that it will test Blockchain technology in the tracking of oat shipments.
The Australia’s largest grain exporter, CBH Group, partnered with Sydney-based startup AgriDigital for the pilot project which will develop a Blockchain-based system to trace the grain's origin and document its quality.
The Blockchain-based system will display supply chain data to potential buyers. CBH hopes that this will increase buyers’ confidence in grain stores and boost sales for Australian grain growers looking to expand to Asian markets.
The Blockchain management pilot is set to launch next week at CBH's oats processor, Blue Lake Milling in South Australia. CBH Chief Executive Andy Crane said that if the project is successful, the pilot could eventually expand to cover the entire multi-billion dollar Western Australian grain industry.
Blockchain to optimize agriculture processes
According to this report, the project will apply Blockchain technology to products that include organic grains and whole grain crops. The system will also enable management of title matching and payment transfer while also handling origin and quality assurance issues.
CBH is just one of the organizations that showed interest in applying the Blockchain to the movement of goods. Other companies worldwide have already moved to launch similar projects in recent months.
China's e-commerce giant Alibaba recently partnered with New Zealand-based dairy cooperative Fonterra, vitamin and supplement supplier Blackmores, and postal services in Australia and New Zealand. Together they formed a consortium to reduce food supply chain fraud and to help enterprise businesses become more comfortable with advances in open, public Blockchain protocols.
Another effort at applying Blockchain to logistics was the recent collaboration of global retail giant Walmart with IBM and the Tsinghua University of Beijing. These organizations experienced initial success in their testing of Blockchain-based supply chain applications, focusing on tracking shipments in China's massive pork market.