This platform helps farmers access new markets and services
By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com
A new product is available to help farmers grow their businesses.
BlockApps, a blockchain platform provider, has launched the TraceHarvest Network.
“It’s focused on the seed-to-sale value chain within agribusiness,” Kieren James-Lubin, the president and CEO at BlockApps, told Farms.com. “That’s everything originating from the input providers through distribution, dealers, to the grower and onto processing firms as well.”
The platform, which farmers and industry stakeholders can sign up for, allows the involved parties to share and review data within a single and secure network.
TraceHarvest can offer multiple benefits to members of the agribusiness sector.
“(The platform) improves margin profiles, but also operations,” James-Lubin said. “Some growers we worked with were still on paper ledgers and had an easier time switching to digital technology. There’s also excitement about carbon offsetting, as the input providers who deploy more advanced technology that requires less carbon, this system allows them to track and prove there’s a big difference.”
Users will be able to engage with one another, creating business opportunities along the way.
“It’ll be an industry-led initiative,” James-Lubin said. “Not only will there be communication and transactions via the technology, there will be an ongoing governance process.”
Traceability is a popular discussion topic within the ag sector.
Being able to trace a product’s origins can have industry benefits domestically and internationally.
“The pandemic has highlighted our supply chains and if they’re resilient. It’s in the public consciousness in a way that it hasn’t been before,” James-Lubin said. “Agribusiness is obviously important globally. Having more confidence about where something came from, what it is and what was done to produce it, I think, is impacting international trade to some degree.”
BlockApps launched TraceHarvest in collaboration with Bayer.
Industry stakeholders in the U.S. and Brazil have used TraceHarvest on a trial basis for the last two years.
The platform “creates enhanced traceability with context for Bayer and our network to solve problems and create value beyond the products themselves,” Michael Pareles, the digital strategy and growth lead at Bayer CropScience, told Farms.com in an emailed statement. “Ultimately, TraceHarvest is helping Bayer to bolster its global commitment to improve transparency and traceability.”