Blockchain is an emerging technology, which has received much attention in recent years, with also very conflicting opinions. On the one hand, some public debates argue that the blockchain is all hype and still hasn’t proven its reliability across most industries and that the buzz around this technology has simply been generated to attract investments; on the other hand, experts in the field declare that BCT is a technology that is almost certain to have profound societal and economic impact in the next years and that it can offer opportunities to different sectors, agri-food included.
Such uncertainty on one side and the rapid and unpredictable direction of blockchain innovation makes it particularly hard for government agencies to make strategic decisions on how to respond.
The TRUSTyFOOD project intends to support policy makers in this arduous task, sheding light on the current partial and fragmented picture of BCT applications in the agri-food domain, by clarifying the benefits and opportunities which BCT can concretely to stakeholders throughout the food chain offer and by providing the most suitable tool to each targeted stakeholder for prompt, easy and effective implementation in their own context. It intends to arrive at draw up a R&I Roadmap for blockchain technologies in the Agri-food sector to prepare the way for R&I activities for the decade to come.
The Pathways towards such ROADMAP foresee:
- Understanding how much blockchain technology is diffused, known and understood, where is mainly applied (sectors/areas), with which purpose and with what level of maturity
- Overcome existing gaps from the previous search through a bottom up approach dialogue with Stakeholders
- Sharing the generated knowledge:
o sum up all the evidences in common public Papers useful to orient / guide future policies in R&I
o collect tools able to practically support this technology’s concrete application
An exhaustive analysis of the context and an active involvement of users is required from the very beginning for the identification of needs and use cases, which will be subsequently translated into operational requirements for services in some way generated and co-created together with people who will use them, as direct or indirect users.
The main phases:
Mapping, collecting and assessing
Due to the novelty and elusiveness of the BC technology, there is no ready-to-use analytical framework yet for assessing its applicability. The project intends to provide an analytical framework for understanding and comparing different blockchain applications, collecting information, experiences and best practices also coming from other sectors, which can become effective in the food domain. The project will carry out an in-depth context’s analysis, through a desk research and directly involving people who are working on BC technology’s application, who have incurred in challenges, failures, successes and can provide interesting insights. Starting from a wide number of real-world case studies, the consortium will identify working practices, implementation techniques, and remaining gaps.
The diversity will have to be taken into account to identify the flexibility required by food systems different contexts.
Discussion with supply chain players and experts in BCTs
The desk research cannot be exhaustive and some discussions and working groups need to be activated along the project lifespan to make emerge evidences and recommendations for the future. The project will investigate and discuss both technical aspects through the involvement of experts as well as non-technical barriers to BCTs deployment, the main focus being on its acceptance from farmers and all the other supply chain players, mitigation of the environmental impact and ensuring finance for adoption.
Dissemination of results
Generated knowledge will be shared outside with interested Parties.
