Food Supply Chain Traceability System using Blockchain Technology

Agricultural sector plays a major role in a country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The existing Food Supply Chain (FSC) suffers from issues like quality, safety, conscious consumption, and regulatory issues. Blockchain technology is a promising technology that can handle all the short comes faced by the current FSC with its key multidimensional features like decentralization, immutability, security, and smart contract. Introducing blockchain technology to FSC systems enhances sustainability and ensures trust among different entities. The blockchain-based FSC system suffers from data handling capability and regulatory issues. In this paper, the problems of the existing blockchain-based FSC system are overcome by introducing a new Food Supply Chain Traceability System (FSCTS) using an Ethereum smart contract linked to an InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) which can handle huge amount of data. The interaction between the different entities is elaborated using sequence diagrams through the proposed cryptocurrency called Amrita Virtual Coin (AVCoin) which overcomes regulatory compliances. The paper also discusses the implementation of the proposed frameworks using enhanced algorithms and its advantages over the existing framework. Finally, different types of open research challenges in the blockchain-based FSC are also addressed in the paper.