Blockchain in agriculture empowering brands & consumers

In this third and final part of the series on food traceability, we explain why evolving consumption patterns worldwide are putting the food industries up against the wall; either they evolve and become more transparent or risk disappearing.

The battle between brands in the F&B sector will be won not by whoever offers the most benefits but by whoever has a way to prove it. Read on to find out what changes some top pioneer brands such as OLAM, SLAY Coffee, and MILK MANTRA are bringing out by implementing food traceability with blockchain in agriculture.

What are the new consumer drivers, and how blockchain in agriculture is driving them?

The statistics don’t lie. Global Consumer behavior patterns in the current COVID climate have turned the food industry upside down. Historically, the consumer’s decision was based on three traditional drivers: taste, price, and convenience, and although there have always been other factors to consider, only a tiny percentage took them into account.

Today this is no longer the case. The traditional drivers have been joined by a new set of evolving drivers that have positioned themselves in the consumer’s value driver plate with an unquestionable weight that ultimately determines their purchasing decision and seems likely to become the norm for the future consumer. Continued adaptation of Blockchain in agriculture is leading to these developments.

Health & Wellness: Involves attributes ranging from nutritional content and organic production to all-natural ingredients and fewer artificial ingredients. 

Safety: Applies to both product attributes, such as the absence of allergens and pesticides, and company attributes like accurate labeling. 

Social impact: From company attributes such as local sourcing, animal welfare, sustainable agriculture,  and fair treatment of employees.   

Experience: Includes retail store layout and services, channel innovation, brand interaction, and personalized engagement spanning pre, during, and post-purchase. 

Transparency: This value driver shows a dominant tendency and refers to product attributes such as clear labeling, certification by trusted third parties, and company attributes like access and trust.  

Transparency has never been more critical. Most importantly, never before has it been fully demonstrable, so whether brands fulfill one or more evolving drivers is only the first step of the brand-conscious journey.  To prove that brands meet one of many evolving drivers, they need to implement agriculture traceability, especially if they consider that: 

“Consumers who place more value on the evolving drivers in their purchase decisions appear more likely to use social media, mobile applications, and digital sources to acquire information about products or brands on the path to purchase. They are also more prone to distrust the food industry in general”.¹  

It’s imperative to notice that consumer’s shift towards these evolving drivers is consistently observed across all regions, incomes, and ages. In other words, the global consumer has fundamentally changed, and brands must decide where they stand in the new consumer value equation.

“94% of the consumers expect brands to be transparent and 83% expect in-depth information about products”² 

The race for consumer trust is precisely what has led brands to work with fully digital food traceability, the only way to guarantee complete transparency. With this process, powered by blockchain in agriculture technology, brands can cover the five consumer’s evolving factors by demonstrating that a product is healthy, has a social impact, is transparent, and guarantees an unparalleled shopping experience by providing detailed and accurate information. Read below why blockchain in agriculture is the go-to technology for tracing food to its source. 

To cope with the avalanche of changes generated by evolving consumer drivers, manufacturers and retailers can’t just sit back and do nothing; They have the opportunity to use tools such as food and agri traceability not only to add to their revenue growth but also to generate greater, much-needed changes with a real social impact. 

Which are some of the brands that have achieved customer’s Evolving drivers through blockchain-based food traceability? 

Milk Mantra for  Health & Wellness: As a manufacturer of dairy products, Milk Mantra was looking for a definitive solution to ensure a bulletproof supply chain to provide the best quality, pure and healthy products while creating a sustainable impact for the network farmers. 

The application of food traceability in products with ingredients of animal origin is critical, specifically in the dairy industry; in the past, the majority of recall incidents globally (China’s Sanlu Group Company, 2008; New Zealand’s Fonterra, 2013; United States Roos Foods, 2014) have been found in both dairy products and foods containing dairy products as an ingredient.

Blockchain-based Food Traceability has proved to be the only tool for capturing the digital journey of the milk as it moves in the supply chain to achieve a level of transparency reassuring for any dairy products consumer. 

Case Study – How Milk Mantra achieved food safety in its dairy value chain

Olam Agro For Social Impact: This leading food agri-business is committed to making a positive social impact, Link to Olam Case study. The sustainable rice project, along with the implementation of food traceability through blockchain in agriculture technology, seeks quality, sustainable, and safe (residue-free) Basmati rice by promoting sustainable rice cultivation in Basmati growing areas, improving farmer’s livelihoods. 

By implementing food traceability through agriculture blockchain technology, Olam Increased farmer income by 12-15%, reduced cost by 15%, and increased yield by 10%; the water usage decreased up to 30%, and the local community generated their own independent income. 

With a product like rice, with a significant impact on the global environment, and with the need of doubling its production to feed India’s population as well as a considerable percentage of the world’s population (India contributes with close to 25% of the global rice production) rice producers like Olam are aware of the importance of rice crops being sustainable. 

Case Study – How OLAM used Traceability for Sustainable Rice Production

Slay Coffee For Transparency: Besides offering the best cup of coffee anywhere and anytime, thanks to its “outside the cafe experience,” this leading gourmet coffee brand revolves around trust and transparency.  

Through blockchain in agriculture, Slay can offer detailed information being fed in real-time across different stages of cultivation, ranging from the geographical mapping of the land to the grower’s profile. 

The information exchanged at various intervention points across the food supply chain is pushed through BLOCKCHAIN in agriculture to generate a digital identity representing the movement of coffee from Seed to Cup. The different stakeholders use a combination of Android-based mobile and web applications to track and trace the bean’s life cycle as it moves from the plantation to the cafe and eventually to the consumers.

By embracing food traceability in its entire food supply chain, Slay not only can claim to be sustainable, transparent, and ethically sourced but can prove it. In doing so, this leading coffee brand is building an unbreakable bond of trust with their consumers while brewing the story of the coffee with the same craftsmanship as their very own baristas. 

Case Study – Slay Coffee – Bean 2 Cup Traceability of Coffee

How is Trace X helping brands to achieve customer’s Evolving drivers with full transparency? 

TraceX Technologies is an Agri-Tech startup based in Bangalore, India. Its flagship platform FOODSIGN™ leverages the power of Blockchain in agriculture to digitize the food and agriculture ecosystem to make the supply chain clean, credible, and traceable. 

Blockchain in agriculture can be scaled from an individual farmer, small co-operatives,  farmer producer companies, and large agribusiness corporations and government agencies. 

Explore our TraceX Solutions 

TraceX is already working with some leading Agri & Food Corporations such as MTR Foods, Slay Coffee, Olam Agro, C-Safe (A Tata-Rails Initiative), Green Earth Fresh Produce, Sam Agri, Govt of Telangana, Vegetables Promotion Council, Kerala, Utkal Tubers, among others. 

These brands are leading the change that every new-age consumer is asking for. They have found in TraceX a key enabler on the digital front and the best ally to showcase their traceable and clean supply chains,  which is crucial to unlock new evolving drivers and gain consumer’s trust. 

If you are an emerging or an established brand, and if you are ready to board the bandwagon building your brand towards the new evolving drivers, talk to TraceX today! 

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