Cambodian Rice Exporter Taps Blockchain for Better Supply Chain Management
Schuttelaar & Partners (SP), a Brussels-based firm that claims to be focused on creating a fair, healthy, and sustainable food ecosystem, has joined forces with Amru Rice, a major exporter of rice in Cambodia. The alliance is aimed at using distributed ledger technology (DLT) to track the entire rice supply chain, while also creating programs that could improve the standard of living of rice farmers, according to reports on August 5, 2020.
Rice on the Blockchain
In a bid to foster transparency in the Cambodian rice industry, and put measures in place that would alleviate the sufferings of farmers in the region, Schuttelaar and Partners (SP) and Amru Rice are collaborating on a blockchain project dubbed BlocRice.
Per sources close to the development, the team carried out a successful blockchain pilot for BlocRice earlier in 2018 and upscaled the platform in 2019 to include more farmers and enable participants to have direct access to consumers.
Notably, the BlocRice project is designed to significantly improve the livelihoods of Cambodian rice farmers and make it possible for them to live within the desired income benchmark of EUR 4,500.
Making it Work
Amru Rice says it plans to develop three blockchain-based applications to handle the issue of supply chain traceability, logistics, sales, and more.
Specifically, the first BlocRice DLT app will enable farmers to bypass the middlemen and sell their products directly to online sellers. Farmers will also be able to track their yields and achievement via the app.
The team says the second blockchain app will help farmers take care of their logistics, product tracing, and transaction forecasts seamlessly, while the third app will focus on supply chain transparency. The app will enable consumers to view the entire product life cycle, as well as the exact product prices for each transaction between all entities in the supply chain.
What’s more, to tackle the issue of poverty among Cambodian rice farmers, the team says it plans to improve the amount growers earn from their rice, plus other farm produce, while also introducing intercropping methods for better agricultural yields.
While blockchain technology is seeing massive adoption in the financial sector of the global economy, a good number of actors have also adopted the burgeoning technology for supply chain traceability.
Earlier in June 2020, BTCManager informed J.M. Smucker, a top U.S. coffee manufacturer has integrated DLT into its coffee supply chain.
