Traceability Platform Based on Green Blockchain: An Application Case Study in Dairy Supply Chain

• Published in: Sustainability 2022-03, Vol.14 (6), p.3321
• Main Authors: Varavallo, Giuseppe, Caragnano, Giuseppe, Bertone, Fabrizio, Vernetti-Prot, Luca, Terzo, Olivier
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Agribusiness; Agricultural production; Algorithms; Archives & records; Blockchain; Case studies; Clean energy; Computer applications; Consortia; Dairy industry; Dairy products; Data acquisition; Data entry; Digital currencies; Energy conservation; Energy consumption; Food chains; Food products; Food quality; Food supply; Literature reviews; Logistics; Milk; Software development; Supply chains
• ISSN: 2071-1050; 2071-1050
• DOI: 10.3390/su14063321

Recent progress in IoT and software development has simplified data acquisition and immutability of information in the agri-food supply chain. In the last few years, several frameworks and applications were proposed to ensure traceability in the agri-food-sector using distributed ledger technologies (DLT) such as Blockchain technologies. Still, no other study has presented a Blockchain-based traceability platform with a lower impact on the environment and lower cost for each transaction sent by the supply chain. This article presents a traceability platform based on Green Blockchain with low energy consumption and costs savings applied to the Fontina PDO cheese supply chain, part of the project “Typicalp”, funded by the European Union (EU). The proposed traceability system is based on Algorand Blockchain, which uses the Pure Proof-of-Stake mechanism of consensus that requires minimal computational power, is highly scalable and environmentally sustainable. In addition to the environmental and financial benefits, the developed traceability platform has made it possible to digitize the entire production chain, making the data immutable and available in real-time for Fontina consortium operators and final consumers.