https://medium.com/@dgwbirch/supply-chains-and-block-chains-980a7340bcbd

Listening to Manuela Saragosa’s interesting BBC Business Daily episode about “fraud in the food chain” (I wouldn’t listen to it while you are eating, incidentally) I was reminded how long and complex the supply chains are in the food industry. That’s great for producers and consumers, but it has risks. How do you trust the food that ends up on your plate? How can you tell, to give one of the examples used in the episode (which included an interview with Jesse Baker of Provenance) that your tuna is sustainable?

Fortunately, the blockchain is going to fix this problem. As Michael Casey and his co-author Pindar Wong explain in their Harvard Business Review piece on the topic (Global Supply Chains are about to get Better, Thanks to Blockchain in HBR, 13th March 2017), blockchain technology allows computers from different organisations to collaborate and validate entries in a blockchain. This removes the need for error prone reconciliation between the different organisation’s internal records and therefore allows stakeholders better and timelier visibility of overall activity. The idea discussed in this HBR piece (and elsewhere) is that some combination of “smart contracts” and tagging and tracing will mean that supply chains become somehow more efficient and more cost-effective.