What can Blockchain do for Helpless Farmers?

• Toshendra Kumar Sharma
• October 21, 2018

Blockchain has a remedy for everything, this might sound astounding, but when it comes to real work, then we do have some significant developments in this domain which have left us awe-struck. If I say that blockchain is a storm that has disrupted every industry for good, then it won’t be wrong. We have seen many developments in this field. Well, what brings me to write this blog is how blockchain can prove to be beneficial for the farmers. You would agree to the fact that the condition of farmers is sadistic in third world countries. Despite putting in a lot of efforts they hardly get returns on the same.

We all know that blockchain is being looked upon as a solution provider for many industries, so why not agriculture. If we talk about nations like India where a significant chunk of GDP is affected by agriculture, having a scientific implementation in this field can not only improve the conditions of farmers but will also influence the GDP positively. I will not be highlighting the socio-economic impact of the blockchain, instead, let’s analyse how will blockchain help in resolving the problems of the farmers.

Before heading towards any other point, let us first delve deep into the problems in the agriculture sector and what is blockchain.

Problems with the agriculture sector-

Well, as per my understanding the most prominent problem which the farmers face today is the interference of the intermediaries. These middlemen, not only affect the payment of the farmers but at the same time, they also impact the pricing of the food products. Sudden price inflation, reduced payments to the farmers, black marketing of food products are some of the common problems which arise because of the presence of too many intermediaries.

The farmers cannot directly deal with the customers or the government for selling their products. They don’t know what the real price in the market is and what are they being paid.

This lack of transparency in the system is the cause of all the problems.

How will blockchain solve the problem?

The blockchain is a digital distributed ledger where all the information gets stored and is time-stamped. With all this, no one can change the data or alter it. Even if there is a case, it can be easily tracked. Another essential feature of blockchain is that the entire system is decentralised, the information is distributed in the network and can be accessed at any time from anywhere.

Now let’s understand how Blockchain will help the Farmers:

As we know that blockchain inhibits the presence of intermediary, it establishes a direct link between the farmers and the consumers. Thus, farmers can get the right price for their product. Moreover, the absence of intermediary further saves the cost and time that goes in contacting the middlemen, transportation, etc.

This technology will enable the farmers to get together and reach out the market without contacting the intermediary. Adoption of cryptocurrency will further make the entire process easy. The farmers can integrate with the world economy.

The process

Once any information is entered in the ledger, no one can change it. For example, there is a company that uses blockchain in agriculture. It can be used to track crops, bringing the right information to the farmers, restaurants, and food distributor.

What needs to be done is to create a blend of IoT and Blockchain, for example, we need to install sensors once the food is loaded on to the truck and this sensor sends the information that gets stored on the blockchain. This information is available to the farmer and buyer. Thus, both get to know about the status of the food.

Further, we can also create a smart contractor who has certain defined conditions. For example, the payment to the farmer needs to be done; the moment food arrives at the buyer’s place. Once this condition is met, the payment gets automatically initiated. Thus a  transparent system is established.

www.tierrabuenadelivery.com is a website which has a catalogue of everything the farmers produced. The payment is made to the farmer in Bitcoin once the customer checks out.

Incorporating such positive measures not only save the money and time but at the same, it ensures that the farmer gets the right amount of their food products.

Conclusion-

It looks very overwhelming, however, this is just one of the major concerns of the farmers, there are other issues which also affect the like what if the payment is not received in the account, conversion of digital currency into fiat currency etc. these factors need to be addressed and we need to make changes in the current system to make it more efficient.