Unlocking the Potential of Blockchain for Agriculture

Blockchain has the potential to provide answers to a number of issues in agriculture, from farmer IDs to smart contracts, from traceability and improving certification, digital payments, insurance, consumer feedback and improved logistics. For example, to improve traceability in agriculture value chains, a decentralized ledger can help to connect inputs, suppliers, producers and buyers.

Blockchain and open data share similar principles, such as the promotion of transparency, equality in information knowledge and access, as well as the reorganisation of data exchange between a number of parties. Blockchain can be very useful to help overcome organisational and technological boundaries between entities that want to automate the exchange of data. It provides strong data security and is highly resilient against cyber-attacks. Both these qualities are desirable in open data platforms because they build a foundation of trust in the data.

In this Webinar, Chris Addison, Senior Programme Coordinator, CTA and Jaclyn Bolt, Business Innovator, Wageningen University & Research, give an overview of blockchain and introduce the possible areas of impact for Agriculture, with example cases. The Webinar also highlights capacities which people working with data need in order to engage effectively with blockchain.

About the Panelists

Chris Addison is Senior Programme Coordinator for Data4Ag at CTA. The Data for Agriculture (Data4Ag) project focuses on data use to benefit smallholder farmers. Chris has worked in the ICT and knowledge management (KM) for development sector for the last 18 years and as director of the nonprofit One World Europe. He contributed to the OpenAire Open Data report as joint author of the Agriculture chapter. Whilst at IFPRI, he commissioned the conversion of the Global Hunger Index data to linked open data and is currently working on a project to publish the CTA archive as a linked open dataset.

Jaclyn Bolt is a Business Innovator at Wageningen University & Research and has broad experience in business development from a governmental and private sector perspective. Her work is centered on the development and implementation of (innovative) sustainable business models and financial mechanisms. She is based at Wageningen UR where she is engaged in national and international settings and has worked in projects in the Caribbean, South America, Africa and South Asia. In the Netherlands, she organises workshops to help organisations in the development of business models for ecological impact.