Creating the food systems of tomorrow | #SBHACK2019

Smiling Gecko, BLW Agroscope, (ARC) Agriculture Research Center, Dezentrum, and SigmaLedger joined forces to define the challenges to tackle for a sustainable future of agriculture and food production. It is all about connecting the entire food value chain in an ecosystem which empowers land owners to claim the rights to their land, incentivizes farmers to produce sustainable products and enables consumers to track resources.

The food industry is not exactly poor in challenges. Many developing countries, for instance, do not have a solid system for enforcing property rights – in other words: in many underdeveloped countries, farmers cannot prove that the land they cultivate and grow food on actually belongs to them. Furthermore, the current system is struggling with ensuring that peasants get fair compensation for their labor, and that risks and compensations are fairly distributed in the event of environmental disasters.

On the other end of the value chain we find consumers who are demanding greater transparency and trustworthy information about the food they eat. A need that cannot yet be satisfied because the current agricultural system is lacking intelligent solutions. As a matter of fact, it can be nearly impossible to verify information on the origins of resources and agricultural food products. This is especially true when it comes to the provenance of food, proof of sustainable and ethical production (also regarding animal welfare and carbon footprint) or the documentation of payments made along the supply chain.

How can we interconnect the entire value chain and enable a direct relationship between farmer and consumer, to prevent food fraud, increase safety, sustainability, traceability, authenticity, and the adequate pricing of food? And how can we create an immutable system where stakeholders (land lease holders, land lease buyers) can rely on automated, trusted and transparent concerning the historic land usage while also benefitting from a data-driven revenue and risk sharing concept?

To overcome these challenges, new ways of recording and documenting the entire supply chain are required. Current land leasehold processes are not clearly defined, making it difficult to track and trace leasehold contracts. In order to determine where the food we all have on our plates every day comes from, we need to develop new techniques to process data. Moreover, centralized structures of land reform programs lead to price-fixing and market segmentation collusion, which ultimately drive prices higher for the consumer while failing to adequately compensate farmers for their work.

What are your solutions to these pain points? We hope you are ready to hack sustainable future models together with us. We need a lot of bright minds and able hands to make it happen!