The food supply chain consists of several stages, such as the sourcing of raw materials, production, packaging, distribution, and finally, consumption. As such several parties are involved in the entire process, including farmers, producers, suppliers, retailers, and other vendors.
This not only makes the food supply chain complex but also makes it difficult for consumers to verify the origins of the food they will be consuming. But blockchain document sharing can solve these issues and bring more transparency and trust to the entire process. Wondering how? Let’s find out.
What are Challenges Faced by the Food Industry?
The most pressing challenge faced by the food industry is the lack of communication among the key players.
Combine this with the growth of food fraud powered by counterfeit organizations, lack of transparency and traceability of the supply chain, and inefficient management of inventory levels and the food industry is ready to buckle under these insurmountable challenges.
So what can be done to optimize these challenges? Enter the partnership between blockchain and SAP.
Analyzing the Partnership Between Blockchain and SAP
The implementation of blockchain technology with SAP aims to revolutionize the food industry. This is achieved by leveraging blockchain to enhance traceability, transparency, and trust throughout the supply chain, ensuring safer, more sustainable, and efficient food production and distribution.
SAP aims to facilitate this through two approaches: SAP Cloud Platform Blockchain and SAP HANA Blockchain.
The SAP Cloud Platform Blockchain serves as a blockchain-as-a-service, enabling applications to be designed and developed to adopt blockchain technology. On the other hand, SAP HANA Blockchain aids in adding blockchain data to SAP HANA such that transaction data can be easily accessed via typical API and SQL infrastructure.
Since consumers are becoming increasingly aware about their food safety and support sustainably sourced brands, it’s a good practice to integrate blockchain with your existing application software.
Bumble Bee Foods had the same thought when they partnered with SAP to leverage its Cloud Platform Blockchain service to help their consumers and all the other stakeholders involved in their yellowfin tuna’s supply chain trace the seafood’s journey from the Indonesian ocean.
SAP’s securing document with QR code helps all Bumble Bee product consumers to track the origin and history of yellowfin tuna by simply scanning a QR code on the seafood’s packaging. The scanning yields information stored on a blockchain network, including the size and weight of the tuna, the location where it was caught, and the fishing group that reeled it in.
Consumers and other stakeholders also become privy to essential information such as the tuna’s freshness, safety, fair trade fishing certification, and sustainability practices followed by the company. It also becomes easier to verify the legitimacy of the game.
SAP’s blockchain service allows brands like Bumble Bee Foods to add and securely store the information about their product from the very beginning of its supply chain journey. This solution is gaining traction since it is tamper-proof and can be viewed by each member involved, bridging the gap between stakeholders and inadequate information and bringing more visibility in the supply chain.